































LIFE 


OF 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


BY 


WASHINGTON IRVING. 

it 


, NEW YORK 

BELFORD COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
18-22 East i8th Street 


[Publishers of BdforcPs Magazine ] 

1 3 - ? 




TROW’S 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY* 
NEW YORK, 


42X7 0*^ 


PREFACE, 


In the course of a revised edition of my works I have come 
to a biographical sketch of Goldsmith, published several years 
since. It was written hastily, as introductory to a selection 
from his writings; and, though the facts contained in it were 
collected from various sources, I was chiefly indebted for them 
to the voluminous work of Mr. James Prior, who had collected 
and collated the most minute particulars of the poet’s history 
with unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity; but had ren¬ 
dered them, as I thought, in a form too cumbrous and overlaid 
with details and disquisitions, and matters uninteresting to the 
general reader. 

When I was about of late to revise my biographical sketch, 
preparatory to republication, a volume was put into my hands, 
recently given to the public by Mr. John Forster, of the Inner 
Temple, who, likewise availing himself of the labors of the in¬ 
defatigable Prior, and of a few new lights since evolved, has 
produced a biography of the poet, executed with a spirit, a 
feeling, a grace and an eloquence, that leave nothing to be de¬ 
sired. Indeed it would have been presumption in me to under¬ 
take the subject after it had been thus felicitously treated, did 
I not stand committed by my previous sketch. That sketch 
now appeared too meagre and insufficient to satisfy public de¬ 
mand ; yet it had to take its place in the revised series of my 
works unless something more satisfactory could be substituted. 
Under these circumstances I have again taken up the subject, 
and gone into it with more fulness than formerly, omitting 
none of the facts which I considered illustrative of the life and 
character of the poet, and giving them in as graphic a style as 
I could command. Still the hurried manner in which I have 
had to do this amidst the pressure of other claims on my atten¬ 
tion, and with the press dogging at my heels, has prevented 
me from giving some parts of the subject the thorough han¬ 
dling I could have wished. Those who would like to see it 



4 


PREFACE. 


treated still more at large, with the addition of critical disqui¬ 
sitions and the advantage of collateral facts, would do well to 
refer themselves to Mr. Prior’s circumstantial volumes, or to 
the elegant and discursive pages of Mr. Forster. 

For my own part, I can only regret my short-comings in 
what to me is a labor of love; for it is a tribute of gratitude to 
the memory of an author whose writings were the delight of 
my childhood, and have been a source of enjoyment to me 
throughout life; and to whom, of all others, I may address the 
beautiful apostrophe of Dante to Virgil: 


Tu se’ lo mio maestro, e ’1 mio autore: 
Tu se’ solo colui, da cu’ io tolsi 
Lo bello stile, che m’ ha fato onore. 

Sunnyside, Aug. t, iS 4 &. 


W. L 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


CONTENTS. 


Preface 


page 
.. 3 


CHAPTER I. 

Birth and parentage.—Characteristics of the Goldsmith race.—Poetical birth¬ 
place.—Goblin house.—Scenes of boyhood.—Lissoy.—Picture of a country par¬ 
son.—Goldsmith’s schoolmistress.—Byrne, the village schoolmaster. — Gold¬ 
smith’s hornpipe and epigram.—Uncle Contarine.—School studies and school 
sports.—Mistakes of a night... 11 


CHAPTER II. 

Improvident marriages in the Goldsmith family.—Goldsmith at the University. 

—Situation of a sizer.—Tyranny of Wilder, the tutor.—Pecuniary straits.— 
Street ballads.—College riots.—Gallows Walsh.—College prize.—A dance inter¬ 
rupted .... . 20 


CHAPTER HI. 

Goldsmith rejected by the bishop.—Second sally to see the world.—Takes pas¬ 
sage for America.—Ship sails without him.—Return on Fiddle-back.—A hos¬ 
pitable friend.—The counsellor. 30 


CHAPTER IV. 

Sallies forth as a law student.—Stumbles at the outset—Cousin Jane and the 
valentine.—A family oracle.—Sallies forth as a student of medicine.—Hocus- 
pocus of a boarding-house.—Transformations of a leg of mutton.—The mock 
ghost.—Sketches of Scotland.—Trials of Toryism.—A poet’s purse for a Conti¬ 
nental tour. 35 


CHAPTER V. 

The agreeable fellow-passengers.—Risks from friends picked up by the wayside. 
—Sketches of Holland and the Butch.—Shifts while a poor student at Leyden. 
—The tulip speculation.—The provident flute.—Sojourn at Paris.—Sketch of 
Voltaire.—Travelling shifts of a philosophic vagabond., 44 











6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VI. 

PAGUS 

Landing in England.—Shifts of a man without money.—The pestle and mortar. 
—Theatricals in a barn.—Launch upon London.—A city night scene.—Strug¬ 
gles with penury.—Miseries of a tutor.—A doctor in the suburb.—Poor 
practice and second-hand finery.—A tragedy in embryo.—Project of the 
written mountains... 52 


CHAPTER Vn. 

Life of a pedagogue.—Kindness to schoolboys—pertness in return.—Expensive 
charities.—The Griffiths and the “ Monthly Review.”—Toils of a literary hack. 

—Runture with the Griffiths.. 57 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Newbery, of picture-book memory.—How to keep up appearances.—Miseries 
of authorship.—A poor relation.—Letter to Hodson . 60 

CHAPTER IX. 

Hackney authorship.—Thoughts of literary suicide.—Return to Peckham.— 
Oriental projects.—Literary enterprise to raise funds.—Letter to Edward 
Wells—to Robert Bryanton.—Death of Uncle Contarine.—Letter to Cousin 
Jane. 65 


CHAPTER X. 

Oriental appointment—and disappointment.—Examination at the College of 
Surgeons.—How to procure a suit of clothes.—Fresh disappointment.—A tale 
of distress.—The suit as clothes in pawn.—Punishment for doing an act of 
charity.—Gayeties of Green-Arbor Court.—Letter to his brother.—Life of Vol¬ 
taire.—Scroggins, an attempt at mock heroic poetry. 72 

CHAPTER XI. 

Publication of “The Inquiry.”—Attacked by Griffith’s Review.—Kenriek, the 
literary Ishmaelite.—Periodical literature.—Goldsmith’s essays.—Garrick as a 
manager.—Smollett and his schemes.—Change of lodgings.—The Robin Hood 
Club. 83 


CHAPTER XII. 

New lodgings.—Visits of ceremony.—Hangers-on.—Pilkington and the white 
mouse.—Introduction to Dr. Johnson.—Davies and his bookshop.—Pretty Mrs. 
Davies.—Foote and his projects.—Criticism of the cudgel. 88 

CHAPTER XIH. 

Oriental projects.—Literary jobs —The Cherokee chiefs.—Merry Islington and 
the White Conduit House.—Letters on the History of England.—James Bos¬ 
well.—Dinner of Davies.—Anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith. S3 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Hogarth a visitor at Islington—his character.—Street studies.—Sympathies be¬ 
tween authors and painters.—Sir Joshua Reynolds—his character—his dinners, 
—The Literary Club—its members.—Johnson’s revels with Lanky and Beau.— 
Goldsmith at the club.. .. 99 











CONTENTS : 


7 


CHAPTER XV. 

PAGE 

Johnson a monitor to Goldsmith—finds him in distress with his landlady—re¬ 
lieved by the Vicar of Wakefield.—The oratorio.—Poem of the Traveller._ 

The poet and his dog.—Success of the poem.—Astonishment of the dub.—Ob¬ 
servations on the poem. 108 


CHAPTER XVI. 

New lodgings.—Johnson’s compliment.—A titled patron.—The poet at Northum¬ 
berland House—His independence of the great.— 1 The Countess of Northum¬ 
berland.—Edwin and Angelina.—Gosford and Lord Clare.—Publication of 
Essays.—Evils of a rising reputation.—Hangers-on.—Job writing.—Goody- 
Two-shoes.—A medical campaign.—Mrs. Sidebotham. Ill 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Publication of the Vicar of Wakefield—opinions concerning it—of Dr. Johnson 
—of Rogers the poet—of Goethe—its merits.—Exquisite extract.—Attack by 


Kenrick.—Reply.—Book-building.—Project of a comedy.. Ill 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Social condition of Goldsmith—his colloquial contests with Johnson.—Anecdotes 
and illustrations. 123 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Social resorts.—The shilling whist club. —A practical joke.—The Wednesday 
club.—The “tun of man.”—The pig butcher.—Tom King.—Hugh Kelly.— 
Glover and his characteristics. . 128 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Great Cham of literature and the King.—Scene at Sir Joshua Reynolds’.— 
Goldsmith accused of jealousy.—Negotiations with Garrick.J-The author and 
the actor—their correspondence . 131 


CHAPTER XXI. 

More hack authorship.—Tom Davies and the Roman History.—Canonbury Cas¬ 
tle.—Political authorship.—Pecuniary temptation.—Death of Newbery the 
elder. 13? 


CHAPTER XXII. 

Theatrical manoeuvring.—The comedy of “False Delicacy.”—First perform¬ 
ance of “The Good-natured Man.”—Conduct of Johnson.—Conduct of the 
author.—Intermeddling of the press. 13* 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Burning the candle at both ends.—Fine apartments.—Fine furniture.—Fine 
clothes.—Fine acquaintances.—Shoemaker’s holiday and jolly pigeon asso¬ 
ciates.—Peter Barlow, Glover, and the Hampstead hoax.—Poor friends among 
great acquaintances . . 143 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Reduced again to book-building.—Rural retreat at Shoemaker’s Paradise- 
Death of Henry Goldsmith—tributes to his memory in the Deserted Village... 147 












8 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

PAGE 

Dinner at Bickerstaff’s — Hiffernan and his impecuniosity.—Kenrick’s epigram. 
Johnson’s consolation.—Goldsmith’s toilet.—The bloom-colored coat.—New 
acquaintances.—The Hornecks.—A touch of poetry and passion.—The Jesse- 
my Bride. 149 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Goldsmith in the Temple.—Judge Day and Grattan.—Labor and dissipation.— 
Publication of the Roman History.—Opinions of it.—History of Animated 
Nature.—Temple rookery.—Anecdotes of a spider. 154 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Honors at the Royal Academy.—Letter to his brother Maurice.—Family for¬ 
tunes.—Jane Contarine and the miniature.—Portraits and engravings.—School 
associations.—Johnson and Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. 161 

CHAPTER XXVHI. 

Publication of the Deserted Village—notices and illustrations of it. 165 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

The poet among the ladies—description of his person and manners.—Expedition 
to Paris with the Horneck family.—The traveller of twenty and the traveller 
of forty.—Hickey, the special attorney.—An unlucky exploit. 170 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Death of Goldsmith’s tnother.—Biography of Parnell.—Agreement with Davies 
for the Histoiy of Rome.—Life of Bolingbroke.—The haunch of venison. 178 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Dinner at the Royal Academy.—The Rowley controversy.—Horace "Walpole’s 
conduct to Chatterton.—Johnson at Redeliffe Church.—Goldsmith’s History 
of England.—Davies’s—ci'iticism.—Letter to Bennet Langton. 181 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Marriage of Little Comedy.—Goldsmith at Barton.—Practical jokes at the ex¬ 
pense of his toilet.—Amusements at Barton.—Aquatic misadventure. 185 

CHAPTER XXXm. 

Dinner at General Oglethorpe’s.— Anecdotes of the general. — Dispute about 
duelling.—Ghost stories .. 188 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Mr. Joseph Cradock.—An author’s confklings.—An amanuensis.—Life at Edge- 
ware.—Goldsmith conjuring.—George Colman.—The Fantoccini. 191 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Broken health.—Dissipation and debts.—The Irish Widow.—Practical jokes.— 
Scrvfc.—A misquoted pun.—Malagrida.—Goldsmith proved to be a fool.—Dis- 
tresf^. ♦nllad-singers.—The poet at Ranleigh. 198 














CONTENTS. 


9 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Invitation to Christmas.—The spring-velvet coat.—The hay-making wig.—The 
mischances of loo.—The fair culprit.—A dance with the Jessamy Bride.. 205 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Theatrical delays.—Negotiations with Colman.—Letter to Garrick.—Croaking 
of the manager.—Naming of the play.—She Stoops to Conquer.— Foote's 
Primitive Puppet Show.—Piety on Pattens.—First performance of the come¬ 
dy-—Agitation of the author.—Success.—Colman squibbed out of town. 209 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

A newspaper attack.—The Evans affray.—Johnson’s comment. 217 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Boswell in Holy-Week.—Dinner at Oglethorpe’s.—Dinner at Paoli's.—The policy 
of truth.-Goldsmith affects independence of royalty.—Paoli’s compliment.— 
Johnson’s eulogium on the fiddle.—Question about suicide.—Boswell’s subser¬ 
viency.221 

CHAPTER XL. 

Changes in the Literary Club.—Johnson’s objection to Garrick.—Election of 
Boswell. 227 

CHAPTER XLI. 

Dinner at Dilly’s.—Conversations on natural history.—Intermeddling of Boswell. 

—Dispute about toleration.—Johnson’s rebuff to Goldsmith — his apology.— 
Man-worship.—Doctors Major and Minor.—A farewell visit.230 

CHAPTER XLII. 

Project of a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.—Disappointment.—Negligent 
Authorship.—Application for a pension.—Beattie’s Essay on Truth.—Public 
adulation.—A high-minded rebuke.235 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

Toil without hope.—The poet in the green-room—in the flower garden—at Vaux- 
hall—dissipation without gayety.—Cradock in town—friendly sympathy—a 
parting scene—an invitation to pleasure. 239 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

A return to drudgery—forced gayety—retreat to the country.—The poem of Re¬ 
taliation.—Portrait of Garrick—of Goldsmith—of Reynolds.—Illness of the 
poet—his death.—Grief of his friends.—A last word respecting the Jessamy 
Bride. 243 

CHAPTER XLV. 


The funeral.—'The monument.—The epitaph.—Concluding reflections 


250 

















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* ■ 








. 




1 













OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


A BIOGRAPHY. 


CHAPTER I. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE—CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOLDSMITH 
RACE—POETICAL BIRTHPLACE—GOBLIN HOUSE—SCENES OF BOY¬ 
HOOD—LISSOY—PICTURE OF A COUNTRY PARSON—GOLDSMITH’S 
SCHOOLMISTRESS—BYRNE, THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER—GOLD¬ 
SMITH’S HORNPIPE AND EPIGRAM—UNCLE CONTARINE—SCHOOL 
STUDIES AND SCHOOL SPORTS—MISTAKES OF A NIGHT. 

There are few writers for whom the reader feels such per¬ 
sonal kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith, for few have so emi¬ 
nently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with 
their writings. We read his‘character in every page, and grow 
into familiar intimacy with him as we read. The artless be¬ 
nevolence that beams throughout his works; the whimsical, 
yet amiable views of human life and human nature; the un¬ 
forced humor, blending so happily with good feeling and good 
sense, and singularly dashed at times with a pleasing melan¬ 
choly ; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and 
softly-tinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his 
intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same 
time that we admire the author. While the productions of 
writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suf¬ 
fered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith are cher¬ 
ished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with os¬ 
tentation, but they mingle with our minds, sweeten our tem¬ 
pers, and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good humor 





12 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


with ourselves and with the world, and in so doing they make 
us happier and better men. 

An acquaintance with the private biography of Goldsmith 
lets us into the secret of his gifted pages. We there discover 
them to be little more than transcripts of his own heart and 
picturings of his fortunes. There he shows himself the same 
kind, artless, good-humored, excursive, sensible, whimsical, in¬ 
telligent being that he appears in his writings. Scarcely an 4 
adventure or character is given in his works that may not be 
traced to his own parti-colored story. Many of his most ludi¬ 
crous scenes and ridiculous incidents have been drawn from 
his own blunders and mischances, and he seems really to have 
been buffeted into almost every maxim imparted by him for 
the instruction of his reader. 

Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 10th of November, 1728, 
at the hamlet of Pallas, or Pallasmore, county of Longford, in 
Ireland. He sprang from a respectable, but by no means a 
thrifty stock. Some families seem to inherit kindliness and 
incompetency, and to hand down virtue and poverty from 
generation to generation. Such was the case with the Gold¬ 
smiths. “ They were always,” according to their own accounts, 
“a strange family; they rarely acted like other people; their 
hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be 
doing anything but what they ought.”—“ They were remark¬ 
able,” says another statement, “for their worth, but of no 
cleverness in the ways of the world.” Oliver Goldsmith will be 
found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of his 
race. 

His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, with hereditary im¬ 
providence, married when very young and very poor, and 
starved along for several years on a small country curacy and 
the assistance of his wife’s friends. His whole income, eked 
out by the produce of some fields which he farmed, and of 
some occasional duties performed for his wife’s uncle, the 
rector of an adjoining parish, did not exceed forty pounds. 

“ And passing rich with forty pounds a year.” 

He inhabited an old, half rustic mansion, that stood on a 
rising ground in a rough, lonely part of the country, overlook¬ 
ing a low tract, occasionally flooded by the river Inny. In this 
house Goldsmith was born, and it was a birthplace worthy of 
a poet; for, by all accounts, it was haunted ground. A tradition 
handed down among the neighboring peasantry states that, in 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


13 


after years, the house, remaining for some time untenanted, 
went to decay, the roof fell in, and it became so lonely and for¬ 
lorn as to be a resort for the ‘ ‘ good people” or fairies, who in 
Ireland are supposed to delight in old, crazy, deserted man¬ 
sions for their midnight revels. All attempts to repair it were 
in vain; the fairies battled stoutly to maintain possession. A 
huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride the house every 
evening with an immense pair of jack-boots, which, in his 
efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through the roof, kick¬ 
ing to pieces all the work of the preceding day. The house 
was therefore left to its fate, and went oO ruin. 

Such is the popular tradition about Goldsmith’s birthplace. 
About two years after his birth a change came over the cir¬ 
cumstances of his father. By the death of his wife’s uncle he 
succeeded to the rectory of Kilkenny West; and, abandoning 
the old goblin mansion, he removed to Lissoy, in the county of 
Westmeath, where he occupied a farm of seventy acres, situ¬ 
ated on the skirts of that pretty little village. 

This was the scene of Goldsmith’s boyhood, the little world 
whence he drew many of those pictures, rural and domestic, 
whimsical and touching, which abound throughout his works, 
and which appeal so eloquently both to the fancy and the 
heart. Lissoy is confidently cited as the original of his “Au¬ 
burn” in the “Deserted Village;” his father’s establishment, a 
mixture of farm and parsonage, furnished hints, it is said, 
for the rural economy of the Vicar of Wakefield; and his 
father himself, with his learned simplicity, his guileless wis¬ 
dom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the world, has 
been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. Let 
us pause for a moment, and draw from Goldsmith’s writings 
one or two of those pictures which, under feigned names, rep¬ 
resent his father and his family, and the happy fireside of his 
childish days. 

“My father,” says the “Man in Black,” who, in some re¬ 
spects, is a counterpart of Goldsmith himself, “myfather, the 
younger son of a good family, was possessed of a small living 
in the church. His education was above his fortune, and his 
generosity greater than his education. Poor as he was, he had 
his flatterers poorer than himself; for every dinner he gave 
them, they returned him an equivalent in praise; and this was 
all he wanted. The same ambition that actuates a monarch at 
the head of his army influenced my father at the head of his 
tabic: he told the story of the ivy-tree, and that was laughed 


14 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


at; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one pair of 
breeches, and the company laughed at that; but the story of 
Taffy in the sedan-chair was sure to set the table in a roar. 
Thus his pleasure increased in proportion to the pleasure he 
gave; he loved all the world, and he fancied all the world loved 
him. 

“ As his fortune was but small, he lived up to the very extent 
of it; he had no intention of leaving his children money, 
for that was dross; he resolved they should have learning, for 
learning, he used to observe, was better than silver or gold. 
For this purpose he undertook to instruct us himself, and took 
as much care to form our morals as to improve our under¬ 
standing. We were told that universal benevolence was what 
first cemented society; we were taught to consider all the 
wants of mankind as our own: to regard the human face 
divine with affection and esteem; he wound us up to be mere 
machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding 
the slightest impulse made either by real or fictitious distress. 
In a word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving 
away thousands before we were taught the necessary qualifica¬ 
tions of getting a farthing.” 

In the Deserted Village we have another picture of his father 
and his father’s fireside: 

“ His house was known to all the vagrant train, 

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; 

The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 

Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast; 

The ruin’d spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claim’d kindred there, and had his claims allow’d; 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 

Sat by his fire, and talk’d the night away; 

Wept o’er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, 

Shoulder’d his crutch, and show’d how fields were won. 

Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow. 

And quite forgot their vices in their woe; 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 

His pity gave ere charity began.” 

The family of the worthy pastor consisted of five sons and 
three daughters. Henry, the eldest, was the good man’s pride 
and hope, and he tasked his slender means to the utmost in 
educating him for a learned and distinguished career. Oliver 
was the second son, and seven years younger than Henry, who 
was the guide and protector of his childhood, and to whom he 
was most tenderly attached throughout life. 

Oliver’s education began when he was about three years 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


15 


old; that is to say, he was gathered under the wings of one of 
those-good old motherly dames, found in every village, who 
cluck together the whole callow brood of the neighborhood, to 
teach them their letters and keep them out of harm’s way. 
Mistress Elizabeth Delap, for that was her name, flourished in 
this capacity for upward of fifty years, and if was the pride 
and boast of her declining days, when nearly ninety years of 
age, that she was the first that had put a book (doubtless a 
hornbook) into Goldsmith’s hands. Apparently he did not 
much profit by it, for she confessed he was one of the dullest 
boys she had ever dealt with, insomuch that she had some¬ 
times doubted whether it was possible to make anything of 
him: a common case with imaginative children, who are apt 
to be beguiled from the dry abstractions of elementary study 
by the picturings of the fancy. 

At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village 
schoolmaster, one Thomas (or, as he was commonly and 
irreverently named, Paddy) Byrne, a capital tutor for a poet. 
He had been educated for a pedagogue, but had enlisted in 
the army, served abroad during the wars of Queen Anne’s 
time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in 
Spain. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for 
the sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin 
populace of Lissoy. Goldsmith is supposed to have had him 
and his school in view in the following sketch in his Deserted 
Village: 


‘ Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, 

There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, 

The village master taught his little school; 

A man severe he was, and stern to view, 

I knew him well, and every truant knew: 

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day’s disasters in his morning face; 

Full well they laugh’d with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; 

Full well the busy whisper circling round, 

Convey d the dismal tidings when he frown’d 
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, 

The love he bore to learning was in fault; 

The village all declared how much he knew, 

’Twas certain he could write and cipher too; 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge: 

In arguing, too, the parson own’d his-skill, 

For, e’en though vanquished, he could argue still; 


16 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


While words of learned length and thund’ring sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around— 

An d still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 

That one small head could carry all he knew.” 

There are certain whimsical traits in the character of 
Byrne, not given in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of 
talking of his vagabond wanderings in foreign lands, and had 
brought with him from the wars a world of campaigning 
stories, of which he was generally the hero, and which he 
would deal forth to his wondering scholars when he ought to 
have been teaching them their lessons. These travellers’ tales 
had a powerful effect upon the vivid imagination of Gold¬ 
smith, and awakened an unconquerable passion for wander¬ 
ing and seeking adventure. 

Byrne was, moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly 
superstitious. He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions 
which abound in Ireland, all which he professed implicitly to 
believe. Under his tuition Goldsmith soon became almost as 
great a proficient in fairy lore. From this branch of good-for- 
nothing knowledge, his studies, by an easy transition, ex¬ 
tended to the histories of robbers, pirates, smugglers, and the 
whole race of Irish rogues and rapparees. Everything, in 
short, that savored of romance, fable, and adventure was 
congenial to his poetic mind, and took instant root there; but 
the slow plants of useful knowledge were apt to be overrun, if 
not choked, by the weeds of his quick imagination. 

Another trait of his motley preceptor, Byrne, was a disposi¬ 
tion to dabble in poetry, and this likewise was caught by his 
pupil. Before he was eight years old Goldsmith had con¬ 
tracted a habit of scribbling verses on small scraps of paper, 
which, in a little while, he would throw into the fire. A few 
of these sibylline leaves, however, were rescued from the 
flames and conveyed to his mother. The good woman read 
them with a mother’s delight, and saw at once that her son 
was a genius and a poet. From that time she beset her 
husband with solicitations to give the boy an education 
suitable to his talents. The worthy man was already strait¬ 
ened by the costs of instruction of his eldest son Henry, and 
had intended to bring his second son up to a trade; but the 
mother would listen to no such thing; as usual, her influence 
prevailed, and Oliver, instead of being instructed in some 
humble but cheerful and gainful handicraft, was devoted to 
poverty and the Muse, 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


17 


A severe attack of the small-pox caused him to be taken 
from under the care of his story-telling preceptor, Byrne. 
His malady had nearly proved fatal, and his face remained 
pitted through life. On his recovery he was placed under the 
charge of the Rev. Mr. Griffin, schoolmaster of Elphin, in 
Roscommon, and became an inmate in the house of his uncle, 
John Goldsmith, Esq., of Ballyoughter, in that vicinity. He 
now entered upon studies of a higher order, but without 
making any uncommon progress. Still a careless, easy 
facility of disposition, an amusing eccentricity of manners, 
and a vein of quiet and peculiar humor, rendered him a 
general favorite, and a trifling incident soon induced his 
uncle’s family to concur in his mother’s opinion of his genius. 

A number of young folks had assembled at his uncle’s to 
dance. One of the company, named Cummings, played on 
the violin. In the course of the evening Oliver undertook a 
hornpipe. His short and clumsy figure, and his face pitted 
and discolored with the small-pox, rendered him a ludicrous 
figure in the eyes of the musician, who made merry at his 
expense, dubbing him his little JLsop. Goldsmith was nettled 
by the jest, and, stopping short in the hornpipe, exclaimed, 


“ Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 

See iEsop dancing, and his monkey playing.” 


The repartee was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years 
old, and Oliver became forthwith the wit and the bright 
genius of the family. It was thought a pity he should not 
receive the same advantages with his elder brother Henry, 
who had been sent to the University; and, as his father’s 
circumstances would not afford it, several of his relatives, 
spurred on by the representations of his mother, agreed to 
contribute toward the expense. The greater part, however, 
was borne by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine. This 
worthy man had been the college companion of Bishop Berke¬ 
ley, and was possessed of moderate means, holding the living 
of Carrick-on-Shannon, He had married the sister of Gold¬ 
smith’s father, but was now a widower, with an only child, a 
daughter, named Jane. Contarine was a kind-hearted man, 
with a generosity beyond his means. He took Goldsmith into 
favor from his infancy; his house was open to him during 
the holidays; his daughter Jane, two years older than the 
poet, was his early playmate; and uncle Contarine continued 


18 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


to the last one of his most active, unwavering, and generous 
friends. 

Fitted out in a great measure by this considerate relative, 
Oliver was now transferred to schools of a higher order, to 
prepare him for the University; first to one at Athlone, kept 
by the Rev. Mr. Campbell, and, at the end of two years, to 
one at Edgeworthstown, under the superintendence of the 
Rev. Patrick Hughes. » 

Even at these schools his proficiency does not appear to have 
been brilliant. He was indolent and careless, however, rather 
than dull, and, on the whole, appears to have been well thought 
of by his teachers. In his studies he inclined toward the Latin 
poets and historians; relished Ovid and Horace, and delighted 
in Livy. He exercised himself with pleasure in reading and 
translating Tacitus, and was brought to pay attention to style 
in his compositions by a reproof from his brother Henry, to 
whom he had written brief and confused letters, and who told 
him in reply, that if he had but little to say, to endeavor to say 
that little well. 

The career of his brother Henry at the University was 
enough to stimulate him to exertion. He seemed to be realiz¬ 
ing all his father’s hopes, and was winning collegiate honors 
that the good man considered indicative of his future success 
in life. 

In the meanwhile Oliver, if not distinguished among his 
teachers, was popular among his schoolmates. He had a 
thoughtless generosity extremely .captivating to young hearts; 
his temper was quick and sensitive, and easily offended; but 
his anger was momentary, and it was impossible for him to 
harbor resentment. He was the leader of all boyish sports and 
athletic amusements, especially ball-playing, and he was fore¬ 
most in all mischievous pranks. Many years afterward, an 
old man, Jack Fitzimmons, one of the directors of the sports 
and keeper of the ball-court at Ballymahon, used to boast of 
having been schoolmate of “ Noll Goldsmith,” as he called him, 
and would dwell with vainglory on one of t>heir exploits, in 
robbing the orchard of Tirlicken, an old family residence of 
Lord Annaly. The exploit, however, had nearly involved dis¬ 
astrous consequences; for the crew of juvenile depredators 
were captured, like Shakespeare and his deer-stealing col¬ 
leagues, and nothing but the respectability of Goldsmith’s 
connections saved him from the punishment that would 
have awaited more plebeian delinquents. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 


19 


An amusing incident is related as occurring in Goldsmith’s 
last journey homeward from Edgeworthstown. His father’s 
house was about twenty miles distant; the road lay through 
a rough country, impassable for carriages. Goldsmith pro¬ 
cured a horse for the journey, and a friend furnished him with 
a guinea for travelling expenses. He was but a stripling of 
sixteen, and being thus suddenly mounted on horseback, with 
money in his pocket, it is no wonder that his head was 
turned. He determined to play the man, and to spend his 
money in independent traveller’s style. Accordingly, instead 
of pushing directly for home, he halted for the night at the little 
town of Ardagh, and, accosting the first person he met, in¬ 
quired, with somewhat of a consequential air, for the best 
house in the place. Unluckily, the person he had accosted was 
one Kelly, a notorious wag, who w~as quartered in the family 
of one Mr. Featherstone, a gentleman of fortune. Amused 
with the self-consequence of the stripling, and willing to play 
off a practical joke at his expense, he directed him to what was 
literally ‘‘the best house in the place,” namely, the family 
mansion of Mr. Featherstone. Goldsmith accordingly rode up 
to what he supposed to be an inn, ordered his horse to be taken 
to the stable, walked into the parlor, seated himself by the fire, 
and demanded what he could have for supper. On ordinary 
occasions he was diffident and even awkward in his manners, 
but here he was “at ease in his inn,” and felt called upon to 
show his manhood and enact the experienced traveller. His 
person was by no means calculated to play off his pretensions, 
for he was short and thick, with a pock-marked face, and an 
air and carriage by no means of a distinguished cast. The 
owner of the house, however, soon discovered his whimsical 
mistake, and, being a man of humor, determined to indulge it, 
especially as he accidentally learned that this intruding guest 
was the son of an old acquaintance. 

Accordingly Goldsmith was “fooled to the top of his bent,” 
and permitted to have full sway throughout the evening. Never 
was schoolboy more elated. When supper was served, he 
most condescendingly insisted that the landlord, his wife and 
daughter should partake, and ordered a bottle of wine to cro wn 
the repast and benefit the house. His last flourish was on going 
to bed, when he gave especial orders to have a hot cake at 
breakfast.* His confusion and dismay, on discovering the next 
morning that he had been swaggering in # this free and easy 
way in the house of a private gentleman, may be readily con- 


20 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


ceived. True to his habit of turning the events of his life to 
literary account, we find this chapter of ludicrous blunders 
and cross purposes dramatized many years afterward in his 
admirable comedy of 11 She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes 
of a Night.” 


CHAPTER II. 

IMPROVIDENT MARRIAGES IN THE GOLDSMITH FAMILY—GOLDSMITH 
AT THE UNIVERSITY—SITUATION OF A SIZER—TYRANNY OF 
WILDER, THE TUTOR—PECUNIARY STRAITS—STREET BALLADS— 
COLLEGE RIOT—GALLOWS WALSH—COLLEGE PRIZE—A DANCE 
INTERRUPTED. 

While Oliver was making his way somewhat negligently 
through the schools, his elder brother Henry was rejoicing his 
father’s heart by his career at the University. He soon dis¬ 
tinguished himself at the examinations, and obtained a scholar¬ 
ship in 1743. This is a collegiate distinction which serves as a 
stepping-stone in any of the learned professions, and which 
leads to advancement in the University should the individual 
choose to remain there. His father now trusted that he would 
push forward for that comfortable provision, a fellowship, and 
thence to higher dignities and emoluments. Henry, however, 
had the improvidence or the ‘ ‘ unworldliness” of his race; re¬ 
turning to the country during the succeeding vacation, he 
married for love, relinquished, of course, all his collegiate 
prospects and advantages, set up a school in his father’s neigh¬ 
borhood, and buried his talents and acquirements for the re¬ 
mainder of his life in a curacy of forty pounds a year. 

Another matrimonial event occurred not long afterward in 
the Goldsmith family, to disturb the equanimity of its worthy 
head. This was the clandestine marriage of his daughter 
Catherine with a young gentleman of the name of Hodson, 
who had been confided to the care of her brother Henry to 
complete his studies. As the youth was of wealthy parentage, 
it was thought a lucky match for the Goldsmith family; but 
the tidings of the event stung the bride’s father to the soul. 
Proud of his integrity, and jealous of that good name which was 
his chief possession, he saw himself and his family subjected 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


21 


to tlie degrading suspicion of having abused a trust reposed in 
them to promote a mercenary match. In the first transports 
of his feelings he is said to have uttered a wish that his daugh¬ 
ter might never have a child to bring like shame and sorrow 
on her head. The hasty wish, so contrary to the usual benign 
nity of the man, was recalled and repented of almost as soon as 
uttered; but it was considered baleful in its effects by the 
superstitious neighborhood; for, though his daughter bore 
three children, they all died before her. 

A more effectual measure was taken by Mr. Goldsmith to 
ward off the apprehended imputation, but one which imposed 
a heavy burden on his family. This was to furnish a marriage 
portion of four hundred pounds, that his daughter might not 
be said to have entered her husband’s family empty-handed. 
To raise the sum in cash was impossible; but he assigned to 
Mr. Hodson his little farm and the income of his tithes until 
the marriage portion should be paid. In the mean time, as his 
living did not amount to £200 per annum, he had to practise 
the strictest economy to pay off gradually this heavy tax in¬ 
curred by his nice sense of honor. 

The first of his family to feel the effects of this economy was 
Oliver. The time had now arrived for him to be sent to the 
University, and, accordingly, on the 11th June, 1745, when 
sixteen years of age, he entered Trinity College, Dublin; but 
his father was no longer able to place him there as a pensioner, 
as he had done his eldest son Henry; he was obliged, therefore, 
to enter him as a sizer, or “poor scholar.” lie was lodged in 
one of the top rooms adjoining the library of the building, 
numbered 85, where it is said his name may still be seen, 
scratched by himself upon a window frame. 

A student of this class is taught and boarded gratuitously, 
and has to pay but a very small sum for his room. It is ex¬ 
pected, in return for these advantages, that he will be a dili¬ 
gent student, and render himself useful in a variety of ways. 
At Trinity College, at the time of Goldsmith’s admission, sev¬ 
eral derogatory and indeed menial offices were exacted from 
the sizer, as if the college sought to indemnify itself for confer¬ 
ring benefits by inflicting indignities. He was obliged to sweep 
part of the courts in the morning, to carry up the dishes from 
the kitchen to the fellows’ table, and to wait in the hall until 
that body had dined. His very dress marked the inferiority 
of the “poor student” to his happier classmates. It was a 
black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, and a plain black 


22 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


cloth cap without a tassel. We can conceive nothing more 
odious and ill-judged than these distinctions, which attached 
the idea of degradation to poverty, and placed the indigent 
youth of merit below the worthless minion of fortune. They 
were calculated to wound and irritate the noble mind, and to 
render the base mind baser. 

Indeed, the galling effect of these servile tasks iipon youths 
of proud spirits and quick sensibilities became at length too 
notorious to be disregarded. About fifty years since, on a 
Trinity Sunday, a number of persons were assembled to wit* 
ness the college ceremonies; and as a sizer was carrying up a 
dish of meat to the fellows’ table, a burly citizen in the crowd 
made some sneering observation on the servility of his office. 
Stung to the quick, the high-spirited youth instantly flung the 
dish and its contents at the head of the sneerer. The sizer was 
sharply reprimanded for this outbreak of wounded pride, but 
the degrading task was from that day forward very properly 
consigned to menial hands. 

It was with the utmost repugnance that Goldsmith entered 
college in this capacity. His shy and sensitive nature was 
affected by the inferior station he was doomed to hold among 
his gay and opulent fellow-students, and he became, at times, 
moody and despondent. A recollection of these early mortifi¬ 
cations induced him, in after years, most strongly to dissuade 
his brother Henry, the clergyman, from sending a son to col¬ 
lege on a like footing. “ If' he has ambition, strong paSsions, 
and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send him 
there, unless you have no other trade for him except your 
own.” 

To add to his annoyances, the fellow of the college who had 
the peculiar control of his- studies, the Rev. Theaker Wilder, 
was a man of violent and capricious temper, and of diametri¬ 
cally opposite tastes. The tutor was devoted to the exact 
sciences; Goldsmith was for the classics. Wilder endeavored 
to force his favorite studies upon the student by harsh means, 
suggested by his own coarse and savage nature. He abused 
him in presence of the class as ignorant and stupid; ridiculed 
him as awkward and ugly, and at times in the transports of 
his temper indulged in personal violence. The effect was to 
aggravate a passive distaste into a positive aversion. Gold¬ 
smith was loud in expressing his contempt for mathematics 
and his dislike of ethics and J@gic; and the prejudices thus 
imbibed continued through life. Mathematics he always pro- 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 23 

nounced a science to which the meanest intellects were compe- 
tent. 

A truer cause of this distaste for the severer studies may 
probably be found in his natural indolence and his love of con¬ 
vivial pleasures. 11 1 was a lover of mirth, good-humor, and 
even sometimes of fun,” said he, “from my childhood.” He 
sang a good song, was a boon companion, and could not resist 
any temptation to social enjoyment. He endeavored to per¬ 
suade himself that learning and dulness went hand in hand, 
and that genius was not to be put in harness. Even in riper 
years, when the consciousness of his own deficiencies ought to 
have convinced him of the importance of early study, he 
speaks slightingly of college honors. 

“ A lad,” says he, “whose passions are not strong enough in 
youth to mislead him from that path of science which his 
tutors, and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or 
five years’ perseverance will probably obtain every advantage 
and honor his college can bestow. I would compare the man 
whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity of dispas¬ 
sionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and, conse¬ 
quently, continue always muddy.” 

The death of his worthy father, which took place early in 
1747, rendered Goldsmith’s situation at college extremely irk¬ 
some. His mother was left with little more than the means of 
providing for the wants of her household, and was unable to 
furnish him any remittances. He would have been compelled, 
therefore, to leave college, had it not been for the occasional 
contributions of friends, the foremost among whom was his 
generous and warm-hearted uncle Contarine. Still these sup¬ 
plies were so scanty and precarious, that in the intervals be¬ 
tween them he was put to great ^traits. He had two college as¬ 
sociates from whom he would occasionally borrow small sums; 
one was an early schoolmate, by the name of Beatty; the other 
a cousin, and the chosen companion of his frolics, Bobert (or 
rather Bob) Bryanton, of Ballymulvey House, near Ballyma- 
hon. When these casual supplies failed him he was more than 
once obliged to raise funds for his immediate wants by pawn¬ 
ing his books. At times he sank into despondency, but he had 
what he termed “a knack at hoping,” which soon buoyed him 
up again. He began now to resort to his poetical vein as a 
source of profit, scribbling street-ballads, which he privately 
sold for five shillings each at a shop which dealt in such small 
wares of literature. He felt an author’s affection for these 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


24 

unowned bantlings, and we are told would stroll privately 
through the streets at night to hear them sung, listening to 
the comments and criticisms of bystanders, and observing the 
degree of applause which each received. 

Edmund Burke was a fellow-student with Goldsmith at the 
college. Neither the statesman nor the poet gave promise of 
their future celebrity, though Burke certainly surpassed his 
contemporary in industry and application, and evinced more 
disposition for self-improvement, associating himself with a 
number of his fellow-students in e debating club, in which 
they discussed literary topics, and exercised themselves in 
composition. 

Goldsmith may likewise have belonged to this association, 
but his propensity was rather to mingle with the gay and 
thoughtless. On one occasion we find him implicated, in an 
affair that came nigh producing his expulsion. A report was 
brought to college that a scholar was in the hands of the bail¬ 
iffs. This was an insult in which every gownsman felt him¬ 
self involved. A number of the scholars flew to arms, and 
sallied forth to battle, headed by a hare-brained fellow nick¬ 
named Gallows Walsh, noted for his aptness at mischief and 
fondness for riot. The stronghold of the bailiff was carried by 
storm, the scholar set at liberty, and the delinquent catchpole 
borne off captive to the college, where, having no pump to put 
him under, they satisfied the demands of collegiate law by 
ducking him in an old cistern. 

Flushed with this signal victory, Gallows Walsh now ha¬ 
rangued his followers, and proposed to break open Newgate, 
or the Black Dog, as the prison was called, and effect a general 
jail delivery. He was answered by shouts of concurrence, 
and away went the throng .of madcap youngsters, fully bent 
upon putting an end to the tyranny of law. They were joined 
by the mob of the city, and made an attack upon the prison 
with true Irish precipitation and thoughtlessness, never hav¬ 
ing provided themselves with cannon to batter its stone walls. 
A few shots from the prison brought them to their senses, and 
they beat a hasty retreat, two of the townsmen being killed, 
and several wounded. 

A severe scrutiny of this affair took place at the University. 
Four students, who had been ringleaders, were expelled; four 
others, who had been prominent in the affray, were public¬ 
ly admonished; among the latter was the unlucky Gold¬ 
smith. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


25 


To make up for this disgrace, he gained, within a month 
afterward, one of the minor prizes of the college. It is true it 
was one of the very smallest, amounting in pecuniary value to 
but thirty shillings, but it was the first distinction he had 
gained in his whole collegiate career. This turn of success 
and sudden influx of wealth proved too much for the head of 
our poor student. He forthwith gave a supper and dance at 
his chamber to a number of young persons of both sexes from 
the city, in direct violation of college rules. The unwonted 
sound of the fiddle reached the ears of the implacable Wilder. 
He rushed to the scene of unhallowed festivity, inflicted cor¬ 
poral punishment on the ‘‘father of the feast,” and turned his 
astonished guests neck and heels out of doors. 

This filled the measure of poor Goldsmith’s humiliations; he 
felt degraded both within college and without. He dreaded 
the ridicule of his fellow-students for the ludicrous termina¬ 
tion of his orgie, and he was ashamed to meet his city acquain¬ 
tances after the degrading chastisement received in their pres¬ 
ence, and after their own ignominious expulsion. Above all, 
he felt it impossible to submit any longer to the insulting ty¬ 
ranny of Wilder; he determined, therefore, to leave, not merely 
the college, but also his native land, and to bury what he con¬ 
ceived to be his irretrievable disgrace in some distant country. 
He accordingly sold his books and clothes, and sallied forth 
from the college walls the very next day, intending to embark 
at Cork for—he scarce knew where—America, or any other 
part beyond sea.* With his usual heedless imprudence, how¬ 
ever, he loitered about Dublin until his finances were reduced 
to a shilling; with this amount of specie he set out on his 
journey. 

For three whole days he subsisted on his shilling; when that 
was spent, he parted with some of the clothes from his back, 
until, reduced almost to nakedness, he was four-and-twenty 
hours without food, insomuch that he declared a handful of 
gray pease, given to him by a girl at a wake, was one of the 
most delicious repasts he had ever tasted. Hunger, fatigue, 
and destitution brought down his spirit and calmed his anger. 
Fain would he have retraced his steps, could he have done so 
with any salvo for the fingerings of his pride. In his extre¬ 
mity he conveyed to his brother Henry information of his dis¬ 
tress, and of the rash project on which he had set out. His 
affectionate brother hastened to his relief; furnished him with 
money and clothes; soothed his feelings with gentle counsel ; 


26 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


prevailed upon him to return to college, and effected an indit 
ferent reconciliation between him and Wilder. 

After this irregular sally upon life he remained nearly two 
years longer at the University, giving proofs of talent in occa¬ 
sional translations from the classics, for one of which he re¬ 
ceived a premium, awarded only to those who are the first in 
literary merit. Still he never made much figure at college, 
his natural disinclination to study being increased by the 
harsh treatment he continued to experience from his tutor. 

Among the anecdotes told of him while at college, is one in¬ 
dicative of that prompt but thoughtless and often whimsical 
benevolence which throughout life formed one of the most ec¬ 
centric yet endearing points of his character. He was engaged 
to breakfast one day with a college intimate, but failed to make 
his appearance. His friend repaired to his room, knocked at 
the door, and was bidden to enter. To his surprise, he found 
Goldsmith in his bed, immersed to his chin in feathers. A 
serio-comic story explained the circumstance. In the course 
of the preceding evening’s stroll he had met with a woman with 
five children who implored his charity. Her husband was in 
the hospital; she was just from the country, a stranger, and 
destitute, without food or shelter for her helpless offspring. 
This was too much for the kind heart of Goldsmith. He was 
almost as poor as herself, it is true, and had no money in his 
pocket; but he brought her to the college gate, gave her the 
blankets from his bed to cover her little brood, and part of his 
clothes foi* her to sell and purchase food; and, finding himself 
cold during the night, had cut open his bed and buried himself 
among the feathers. 

At length, on the 27th of February, 1749, O. S., he was ad¬ 
mitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and took his final 
leave of the University. He was freed from college rule, that 
emancipation so ardently coveted by the thoughtless student, 
and which too generally launches him amid the cares, the 
hardships, and vicissitudes of life. He was freed, too, from the 
brutal tyranny of Wilder. If his kind and placable nature 
could retain any resentment for past injuries, it might have 
been gratified by learning subsequently that the passionate 
career of Wilder was terminated by a violent death in the 
course of a dissolute brawl; but Goldsmith took no delight in 
the misfortunes even of his enemies. 

He now returned to his friends, no longer the student to sport 
away the happy interval of vacation, but the anxious man, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH,\ 


27 


who is henceforth to shift for himself and make his way- 
through the world. In fact, he had no legitimate home to re¬ 
turn to. At the death of his father, the paternal house at Lis- 
soy, in which Goldsmith had passed his childhood, had been 
taken by Mr. Hodson, who had married his sister Catherine. 
His mother had removed to Ballymahon, where she occupied 
a small house, and had to practise the severest frugality. His 
elder brother Henry served the curacy and taught the school 
of his late father’s parish, and lived in narrow circumstances 
at Goldsmith’s birthplace, the old goblin-house at Pallas. 

None of his relatives were in circumstances to aid him with 
anything more than a temporary home, and the aspect of 
every one seemed somewhat changed. In fact, his career at 
college had disappointed his friends, and they began to doubt 
his being the great genius they had fancied him. He whimsi¬ 
cally alludes to this circumstance in that piece of autobiography, 
“ The Man in Black,” in the Citizen of the World. 

“ The first opportunity my father had of finding his expecta¬ 
tions disappointed was in the middling figure I made at the 
University; he had flattered himself that he should soon see me 
rising into the foremost rank in literary reputation, but was 
mortified to find me utterly unnoticed and unknown. His 
disappointment might have been partly ascribed to his having 
overrated my talents, and partly to my dislike of mathemati¬ 
cal reasonings at a time when my imagination and memory, 
yet unsatisfied, were more eager after new objects than desir¬ 
ous of reasoning upon those I knew. This, however, did not 
please my tutors, who observed, indeed, that I was a little 
dull, but at the same time allowed that I seemed to be very 
good-natured, and had no harm in me. ” * 

The only one of his relatives who did not appear to lose faith 
in him was his uncle Contarine. This kind and considerate 
man, it is said, saw in him a warmth of heart requiring some 
skill to direct, and a latent genius that wanted time to mature, 
and these impressions none of his subsequent follies and irregu¬ 
larities wholly obliterated. His purse and affection, therefore, 
as well as his house, were now open to him, and he became his 
chief counsellor and director after his father’s death. He urged 
him to prepare for holy orders, and others of his relatives con¬ 
curred in the advice. Goldsmith had a settled repugnance to a 
clerical life. This had been ascribed by some to conscientious 


* Citizen of the World, Letter xxvii. 




28 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


scruples, not considering himself of a temper and frame of mind 
for such a sacred office; others attributed it to his roving pro¬ 
pensities, and his desire to visit foreign countries; he himself 
gives a whimsical objection in his biography of the “ Man in 
Black“ To be obliged to wear a long wig when I liked a short 
one, or a black coat when I generally dressed in brown, I 
thought such a restraint upon my liberty that I absolutely re¬ 
jected the proposal.” 

In effect, however, his scruples were overruled, and he 
agreed to qualify himself for the office. He was now only 
twenty-one, and must pass two years of probation. They were 
two years of rather loitering, unsettled life. Sometimes he was 
at Lissoy, participating with thoughtless enjoyment in the 
rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson; 
sometimes he was with his brother Henry, at the .old goblin 
mansion at Pallas, assisting him occasionally in his school. 
The early marriage and unambitious retirement of Henry, 
though so subversive of the fond plans of his father, had proved 
happy in their results. He was already surrounded by a 
blooming family; he was contented with his lot, beloved by 
his parishioners, and lived in the daily practice of all the ami¬ 
able virtues, and the immediate enjoyment of their reward. 
Of the tender affection inspired in the breast of Goldsmith by 
the constant kindness of this excellent brother, and of the 
longing recollection with which, in the lonely wanderings of 
after years, he looked back upon this scene of domestic felicity, 
we have a touching instance in the well-known opening to his 
poem of “ The Traveller:” 

“ Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 

Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po; 

4 s ♦ sf* 

Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, 

My heart untravell’d fondly turns to thee; 

Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, 

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, 

And round his dwelling guardian saints attend; 

Bless’d be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire; 

Bless’d that abode where want and pain repair, 

And every stranger finds a ready chair: 

Bless’d be those feasts with simple plenty crown’d. 

Where all the ruddy family around 
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale; 


OLIVER G OLD SMITH. 


29 


Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 

And learn the luxury of doing good.” 

During this loitering life Goldsmith pursued no study, hut 
rather amused himself with miscellaneous reading; such as 
biography, travels, poetry, novels, plays—everything, in short, 
f that administered to the imagination. Sometimes he strolled 
' along the banks of the river Inny, where, in after years, when 
he had become famous, his favorite seats and haunts used to 
be pointed out. Often he joined in the rustic sports of the 
villagers, and became adroit at throwing the sledge, a favorite 
feat of activity and strength in Ireland. Recollections of these 
“healthful sports” we find in his “Deserted Village:” 

“ How often have I bless’d the coming day, 

When toil remitting lent its turn to play. 

And all the village train, from labor free, 

Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree: 

And many a gambol frolicked o’er the ground, 

And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.” 

A boon companion in all his rural amusements was his 
cousin and college crony, Robert Bryanton, with whom, he 
sojourned occasionally at Ballymulvey House in the neighbor¬ 
hood. They used to make excursions about the country on 
foot, sometimes fishing, sometimes hunting otter in the Inny. 
They got up a country club at the little inn of Ballymahon, of 
which Goldsmith soon became the oracle and prime wit, aston¬ 
ishing his unlettered associates by his learning, and being 
considered capital at a song and a story. From the rustic 
conviviality of the inn at Ballymahon, and the company 
which used to assemble there, it is surmised that he took some 
hints in after life for his picturing of Tony Lumpkin and his 
associates: “Dick Muggins, the exciseman; Jack Slang, the 
horse doctor; little Aminidab, that grinds the music-box, and 
Tom Twist, that spins the pewter platter.” Nay, it is,thought 
that Tony’s drinking song at the “Three Jolly Pigeons” was 
but a revival of one of the convivial catches at Ballymahon: 

“ Then come put the jorum about, 

And let us be merry and clever, 

Our hearts and our liquors are stout, 

Here’s the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 

Let some cry of woodcock or hare, 

Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons. 

But of all the gay birds in the air, 

Here’s a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. 

Toroddle, toi’oddle, toroll.” 


30 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


Notwithstanding all these accomplishments and this rural 
popularity, his friends began to shake their heads and shrug 
their shoulders when they spoke of him; and his brother 
Henry noted with anything but satisfaction his frequent visits 
to the club at Ballymahon. He emerged, however, unscathed 
from this dangerous ordeal, more fortunate in this respect 
than his comrade Bryanton; but he retained throughout lifp 
a fondness for clubs; often, too, in the course of his checkered 
career, he looked back to this period of rural sports and care¬ 
less enjoyments as one of the few sunny spots of his cloudy 
life; and though he ultimately rose to associate with birds of a 
finer feather, his heart would still yearn in secret after the 
“ Three Jolly Pigeons.” 


CHAPTER III. 

GOLDSMITH REJECTED BY THE BISHOP—SECOND SALLY TO SEE 
THE WORLD—TAKES PASSAGE FOR AMERICA—SHIP SAILS WITH¬ 
OUT HIM—RETURN ON FIDDLE-BACK—A HOSPITABLE FRIEND— 
THE COUNSELLOR. 

The time was now arrived for Goldsmith to apply for orders, 
and he presented himself accordingly before the Bishop of 
Elfphn for.ordination. We have stated his great objection to 
clerical life, the obligation to wear a black coat; and, whim¬ 
sical as it may appear, dress seemed in fact to have formed an 
obstacle to his entrance into the church. He had .ever a pas¬ 
sion for clothing his sturdy but awkward little person in gay 
colors; and on this solemn occasion, when it was to be sup 
posed his garb would be of suitable gravity, he appeared 
luminously arrayed in scarlet breeches! He was rejected by 
the bishop; some say for want of sufficient studious prepara¬ 
tion; his rambles and frolics with Bob Bryanton, and his revels 
with the club at Ballymahon, having been much in the way of 
his theological studies; others attribute his rejection to reports 
of his college irregularities, which the bishop had received 
from his old tyrant Wilder; but those who look into the 
matter with more knowing eyes pronounce the scarlet breeches 
to have been the fundamental objection. “My friends,” says 
Goldsmith, speaking through his humorous representative, 



OLIVER G 0LDSM1TH. 


31 


the “Man in Black”—“my friends were now perfectly satis¬ 
fied I was undone; and yet they thought it a pity for one that 
had not the least harm in him, and was so very good-natured.” 
His uncle Contarine, however, still remained unwavering in 
his kindness, though much less sanguine ih his expectations. 
He now looked round for a humbler sphere of action, and 
through his influence and exertions Oliver was received as 
tutor in the family of a Mr. Flinn, a gentleman of the neigh¬ 
borhood. The situation was apparently respectable; he had 
his seat at the table, and joined the family in their domestic 
recreations and their evening game at cards. There was a 
servility, however, in his position, which was not to his taste; 
nor did his deference for the family increase upon familiar in¬ 
tercourse. He charged a member of it with unfair play at 
cards. A violent altercation ensued, which ended in his 
throwing up his situation as tutor. On being paid off he found 
himself in possession of an unheard of amount of money. His 
wandering propensity and his desire to see the world were 
instantly in the ascendency. Without communicating his 
plans or intentions to his friends, he procured a good horse, 
and with thirty pounds in his pocket made his second sally 
forth into the world. 

The worthy niece and housekeeper of the hero of La Mancha 
could not have been more surprised and dismayed at one of 
the Don’s clandestine expeditions, than were the mother and 
friends of Goldsmith when they heard of his mysterious de¬ 
parture. Weeks elapsed, and nothing was seen or heard of 
him. It was feared that he had left the country on one of his 
wandering freaks, and his poor mother was reduced ahnost to 
despair, when one day he arrived at her door almost as for¬ 
lorn in plight as the prodigal son. Of his thirty pounds not a 
shilling was left; and instead of the goodly steed on which he 
had issued forth on his errantry, he was mounted on a sorry 
little pony, which he had nicknamed Fiddle-back. As soon as 
his mother was well assured of his safety, she rated him 
soundly for his inconsiderate conduct. His brothers and sis¬ 
ters, who were tenderly attached to him, interfered, and suc¬ 
ceeded in mollifying her ire; and whatever lurking anger the 
good dame might have, was no doubt effectually vanquished 
by the following whimsical narrative which he drew up at his 
brother’s house and dispatched to her: 

‘ 4 My dear mother, if you will sit down and calmly listen to 
what I say, you shall be fully resolved in every one of those 


32 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


many questions you have asked me. I went to Cork and con¬ 
verted my horse, which you prize so much higher than Fiddle' 
back, into cash, took my passage in a ship bound for America, 
and, at the same time, paid the captain for my freight and all 
the other expenses of my voyage. But it so happened that the 
wind did not answer for three weeks; and you know, mother, 
that I could not command the elements. My misfortune was, 
that, when the wind served, I happened to be with a party in 
the country, and my friend the captain never inquired after 
me, but set sail with as much indifference as if I had been on 
board. The remainder of my time I employed in the city and 
its environs, viewing everything curious, and you know no one 
can starve while he has money in his pocket. 

“Reduced, however, to my last two guineas, I began, to think 
of my dear mother and friends whom I had left behind me, 
and so bought that generous beast Fiddle-back, and bade adieu 
to Cork with only five shillings in my pocket. This, to be sure, 
was but a scanty allowance for man and horse toward a jour¬ 
ney of above a hundred miles; but I did not despair, for I knew 
I must find friends on the road. 

“I recollected particularly an old and faithful acquaintance 
I made at college, who had often and earnestly pressed me to 
spend a summer with him, and he lived but eight miles from 
Cork. This circumstance of vicinity he would expatiate on to 
me with peculiar emphasis. ‘We shall,’ says he, ‘enjoy the 
delights of both city and country, and you shah command my 
stable and my purse.’ J 

“However, upon the way I met a poor woman all in teal's 
who told me her husband had been arrested for a debt he was 
not able to pay, and that his eight children must now starve 
bereaved as they were of his industry, which had been their 
oniy support. I thought myself at home, being not far from 
my good friend’s house, and therefore parted with a moiety of 
all my store; and pray, mother, ought I not to have given her 
the other half crown, for what she got would be of little use to 
her? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my affection¬ 
ate friend, guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who 
flew at me and would have torn me to pieces but for the assist- 
fn T eJt W ? man ’ whose count enance was not less grim than 
the A? ; y e \ she with great humanity relieved me from 
the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed on to carry up my 
Marne to her master. ^ 1 y 

“Without suffering me to wait long, my old friend, who was 


OTA YER GOLDSMITH. 


33 


then recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down in his 
nightcap, nightgown, and slippers, and embraced me with the 
most cordial welcome, showed me in, and, after giving me a 
history of his indisposition, assured me that he considered him¬ 
self peculiarly fortunate in having under his roof the man he 
most loved on earth, and whose stay with him must, above all 
tilings, contribute to perfect his recovery. I now repented 
sorely I had not given the poor woman the other half crown, 
as I thought all my bills of humanity would be punctually an¬ 
swered by this worthy man. I revealed to him my whole soul; 
I opened to him all my distresses; and freely owned that I had 
but one half crown in my pocket; but that now, like a ship 
after weathering out the storm, I considered myself secure in a 
safe and hospitable harbor. He made no answer, but walked 
about the room, rubbing his hands as one in deep study. This 
I imputed to the sympathetic feelings of a tender heart, which 
increased my esteem for him, and, as that increased, I gave the 
most favorable interpretation to his silence. I construed it into 
delicacy of sentiment, as if he dreaded to wound my pride by 
expressing his commiseration in words, leaving his generous 
conduct to speak for itself. 

“It now approached six o’clock in the evening; and as I had 
eaten no breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my appetite 
for dinner grew uncommonly keen. At length the old woman 
came into the room with two plates, one spoon, and a dirty 
cloth, which she laid upon the table. This appearance, without 
increasing my spirits, did not diminish my appetite. My pro¬ 
tectress soon returned with a small bowl of sago, a small por¬ 
ringer of sour milk, a loa£ of stale brown bread, and the heel of 
an old cheese all over crawling with mites. My friend apolo¬ 
gized that his illness obliged him to live on slops, and that bet¬ 
ter fare was not in the house; observing, at the same time, 
that a milk diet was certainly the most healthful; and at eight’ 
o’clock he again recommended a regular life, declaring that for 
his part he would lie down with the lamb and rise with, the lark. 
My hunger was at this time so exceedingly sharp that I wished 
for another slice of the loaf, but was obliged to go to bed with¬ 
out even that refreshment. 

“This lenten entertainment I had received made me resolve 
to depart as soon as possible; accordingly, next morning, when 
I spoke of going, he did not oppose my resolution; he rather 
commended my design, adding some very sage counsel upon 
the occasion. ‘ To be sure,’ said he, 1 the longer you stay away 


34 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


from your mother, the more you will grieve her and your other 
friends; and possibly they are already afflicted at hearing of 
this foolish expedition you have made.’ Notwithstanding all 
this, and without any hope of softening such a sordid heart, I 
again renewed the tale of my distress, and asking ‘how he 
nought I could travel above a hundred miles upon one half 
crown?’ I begged to borrow a single guinea, which I assured 
him should be repaid with thanks. ‘ And you know, sir, ’ said 
I, ‘ it is no more than I have done for you. ’ To which he firmly 
answered, ‘ Why, look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that is neither here 
nor there. I have paid you all you ever lent me, and this 
sickness of mine has left me bare of cash. But I have be¬ 
thought myself of a conveyance for you; sell your horse, and I 
will furnish you a much better one to ride on.’ I readily 
grasped at his proposal, and begged to see the nag; on which 
he led me to his bedchamber, and from under the bed he pulled 
out a stout oak stick. ‘ Here he is,’ said he; * take this in your 
hand, and it will carry you to your-mother’s with more safety 
than such a horse as you ride. ’ I was in doubt, when I got it 
into my hand, whether I should not, in the first place, apply it 
to his pate; but a rap at the street door made the wretch fly to 
it, and when I returned to the parlor, he introduced me, as if 
nothing of the kind had happened, to the gentleman who en¬ 
tered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy friend, 
of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I 
could scarcely compose myself, and must have betrayed indig¬ 
nation in my mien to the stranger, who was a counsellor-at*- 
law in the neighborhood, a man of engaging aspect and polite 
address. 

“After spending an hour, he asked my friend and me to 
dine with him at his house. This I declined at first, as I 
wished to have no farther communication with my hospitable 
friend; but at the solicitation of both I at last consented, de¬ 
termined as I was by two motives: one, that I was prejudiced 
in favor of the looks and manner of the counsellor; and the 
other, that I stood in need of a comfortable dinner. And 
there, indeed, I found everything that I could wish, abund¬ 
ance without profusion, and elegance without affectation. In 
the evening, when my old friend, who had eaten very plenti¬ 
fully at his neighbor’s table, but talked again of lying down 
with the lamb, made a motion to me for retiring, our generous 
host requested I should take a. bed with him. upon which I 
plainly told my old friend that he might go home and take 


OLIVEK G 0 IDS Ml TIT. 


35 


care of the horse he had given me, but that I should never re¬ 
enter his doors. He went away with a laugh, leaving me to 
add this to the other little things the counsellor already knew 
of his plausible neighbor. 

“And now, my dear mother, I found sufficient to reconcile 
me to all my follies; for here I spent three whole days. The 
counsellor had two sweet girls to his daughters, who played 
enchantingly on the harpsichord; and yet it was but a mel¬ 
ancholy pleasure I felt the first time I heard them; for that 
being the first time also that either of them had touched the 
instrument since their mother’s death, I saw the tears in 
silence trickle down their father’s cheeks. I every day en¬ 
deavored to go away, but every day was pressed and obliged 
to stay. On my going, the counsellor offered me his purse, 
with a horse and servant to convey me home; but the latter I 
declined, and only took a guinea to bear my necessary ex¬ 
penses on the road. 

“Oliver Goldsmith. 

“ To Mrs. Anne Goldsmith, Ballymahon.” 

Such is the story given by the poet-errant of this his second 
sally in quest of adventures. We cannot but think it was 
here and there touched up a little wfith the fanciful pen of the 
future essayist, wfith a view to amuse his mother and soften 
her vexation; but even in these respects it is valuable as 
showing the early play of his humor, and his happy knack of 
extracting sweets from that worldly experience wffiich to 
others yields nothing but bitterness. 


CHAPTER IV. 

SALLIES FORTH AS A LAW STUDENT—STUMBLES AT THE OUTSET 
—COUSIN JANE AND THE VALENTINE—A FAMILY ORACLE—SAL¬ 
LIES FORTH AS A STUDENT OF MEDICINE—HOCUS-POCUS OF A 
BOARDING-HOUSE—TRANSFORMATIONS OF A LEG OF MUTTON— 
THE MOCK GHOST—SKETCHES OF SCOTLAND—TRIALS OF TOADY¬ 
ISM—A POET’S PURSE FOR A CONTINENTAL TOUR. 

A new consultation was held among Goldsmith’s friends as 
to his future course, and it 'was determined he should try the 
law. His uncle Contarine agreed to advance the necessary 
funds, and actually furnished him with fifty pounds, with 



36 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


which he set off for London, to enter on his studies at the 
Temple. Unfortunately, he fell in company at Dublin with a 
Roscommon acquaintance, one whose wits had been sharpened 
about town, who beguiled him into a gambling-house, and 
soon left him as penniless as when he bestrode the redoubtable 
Fiddle-badk. 

He was so ashamed of this fresh instance of gross heedless¬ 
ness and imprudence that he remained some time in Dublin 
without communicating to his friends his destitute condition. 
They heard of it, however, and he was invited back to the 
country, and indulgently forgiven by his generous uncle, but 
less readily by his mother, who was mortified and disheart¬ 
ened at seeing all her early hopes of him so repeatedly blighted. 
His brother Henry, too, began to lose patience at these suc¬ 
cessive failures, resulting from thoughtless indiscretion; and 
a quarrel took place, which for some time interrupted their 
usually affectionate intercourse. 

The only home where poor erring Goldsmith still received a 
welcome was the parsonage of his affectionate, forgiving 
uncle. Here he used to talk of literature with the good, 
simple-hearted man, and delight him and his daughter with 
his verses. Jane, his early playmate, was now the woman 
grown; their intercourse was of a more intellectual kind than 
formerly; they discoursed of poetry and music; she played on 
the harpsichord, and he accompanied her with his flute. The 
music may not have been very artistic, as he never performed 
but by ear; it had probably as much merit as the poetry, 
which, if we may judge by the following specimen, was as yet 
but juvenile: 

TO A YOUNG LADY ON VALENTINE’S DAY. 

"WITH THE DRAWING OP A HEART. 

With submission at your shrine, 

Comes a heart your Valentine; 

From the side where once it grew, 

See it panting flies to you. 

Take it, fair one, to your breast, 

Soothe the fluttering thing to rest; 

Let the gentle, spotless toy, 

Be your sweetest, greatest joy; 

Every night when wrapp’d in sleep, 

Next your heart the conquest keep; 

Or if dreams your fancy move, 

Hear it whisper me and love; 

Then in pity to the swain. 

Who must heartless else remain, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


37 


Soft as gentle dewy show’rs, 

Slow descend on April flsnv’rs; 
Soft as gentle riv’lets glide, 

Steal unnoticed to my side; 

If the gem you have to spare, 
Take your own and place it there. 


If this valentine was intended for the fair Jane, and expres- 
• sive of a tender sentiment indulged by the stripling poet, it 
was unavailing, as not long afterward she was married to a 
Mr. Lawder. We trust, however, it was but a poetical pas¬ 
sion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness and ex¬ 
hales itself in rhyme. While Oliver was thus piping and poet¬ 
izing at the parsonage, his uncle Contarine received a visit 
from Dean Goldsmith of Cloyne; a kind of magnate in the 
wide but improvident family connection, throughout which 
his word was law and almost gospel. This august dignitary 
was pleased to discover signs of talent in Oliver, and suggested 
that as he had attempted divinity and law without success, he 
should now try physic. The advice came from too important 
a source to be disregarded, and it was determined to send. him 
to Edinburgh to commence his studies. The Dean having 
given the advice, added to it, we trust, his blessing, but no 
money; that was furnished from the scantier purses of Gold¬ 
smith’s brother, his sister (Mrs. Hodson) and his ever ready 
uncle, Contarine. 

It was in the autumn of 1752 that Goldsmith arrived in 
Edinburgh. His outset in that city came near adding to the 
list of his indiscretions and disasters. Having taken lodgings 
at haphazard, he left his trank there, containing all his worldly 
effects, and sallied forth to see the town. After sauntering 
about the streets until a late hour, he thought of returning 
home, when, to his confusion, he found he had not acquainted 
himself with the name either of his landlady or of the street in 
which she lived. Fortunately, in the height of his whimsical 
perplexity, he met the cawdy or porter who had carried his 
trunk, and who now served him as a guide. 

He did not remain long in the lodgings in which he had put 
up. The hostess was too adroit at that hocus-pocus of the 
table which often is practised in cheap boarding-houses. No 
one could conjure a single joint through a greater variety of 
forms. A loin of mutton, according to Goldsmith’s account, 
would serve him and two fellow-students a whole week. “A 
brandered chop was served up one day, a fried steak another. 


38 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


collops with onion sauce a third, and so on until the fleshy 
parts were quite consumed, when finally a dish of broth was 
manufactured from the bones on the seventh day, and the 
landlady rested from her labors.” Goldsmith had a good- 
humored mode of taking things, and for a short time amused 
himself with the shifts and expedients of his landlady, which 
struck him in a ludicrous manner; he soon, however, tell in 
with fellow-students from his own country, whom he joined at * 
more eligible quarters. 

He now attended medical lectures, and attached himself to 
an association of students called the Medical Society. He set 
out, as usual, with the best intentions, but, as usual, soon fell 
into idle, convivial, thoughtless habits. Edinburgh was in¬ 
deed a place of sore trial for one of his temperament. Con¬ 
vivial meetings were all the vogue, and the tavern was the 
universal rallying-place of good-fellowship. And then Gold¬ 
smith’s intimacies lay chiefly among the Irish students, who 
were always ready for a wild freak and frolic. Among them 
he was a prime favorite and somewhat of a leader, from his 
exuberance of spirits, his vein of humor, and his talent at 
singing an Irish song and telling an Irish story. 

His usual carelessness in money matters attended him. 
Though his supplies from home were scanty and irregular, he 
never could bring himself into habits of prudence and econ¬ 
omy ; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; 
often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or 
generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he as¬ 
sumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one 
afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a 
convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he 
suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which 
of the two should treat the whole party to the play. The 
moment the proposition had bolted from his lips, his heart 
was in his throat. “To my great though secret joy,” said he, 
“they all declined the challenge. Had it been accepted, and 
had I proved the loser, a part of my wardrobe must have been 
pledged in order to raise the money.” 

At another of these meetings there was an earnest dispute 
on the question of ghosts, some being firm believers in the pos¬ 
sibility of departed spirits returning to visit their friends and 
familiar haunts. One of the disputants set sail the next 
day for London, but the vessel put back through stress of 
weather. His return was unknown except to one of the be- 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


39 


lievers in ghosts, who concerted with him a trick to be played 
off on the opposite party. In the evening, at a meeting of the 
students, the discussion was renewed; and one of the most 
strenuous opposers of ghosts was asked whether he considered 
himself proof against ocular demonstration? He persisted in 
his scoffing. Some solemn process of conjuration was per¬ 
formed, and the comrade, supposed to be on his way to Lon¬ 
don made his appearance. The effect was fatal. The unbe¬ 
liever fainted at the sight, and ultimately went mad. We 
have no account of what share Goldsmith took in this transac¬ 
tion, at which he was present. 

The following letter to his friend Bryanton contains some of 
Goldsmith’s impressions concerning Scotland and its inhabi¬ 
tants, and gives indications of that humor which characterized 
some of his later writings. 


“Robert Bryanton , at Bally matron, Ireland. 

“Edinburgh, September26, 1753. 

“My dear Bob: How many good excuses (and you know 
I was ever good at an excuse) might I call up to vindicate my 
past shameful silence. I might tell how I wrote a long letter 
on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry at my not 
receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with busi¬ 
ness you know I was always pestered) had never given me 
time to finger a pen. But I suppress those and twenty more 
as plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be at¬ 
tended with a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. 
Let me then speak truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it 
from the mother’s side) has hitherto prevented my writing to 
you, and still prevents my writing at least twenty-five letters 
more, due to my friends in Ireland. No turn-spit-dog gets up 
into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write; 
yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better than I do 
him I now address. 

“Yet what shall I say now I am entered? Shall I tire you 
with a description of this unfruitful country; where I must 
lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys 
scarcely able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only 
creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. 
Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. 
No grove, nor brook, lend their music to cheer the stranger, or 
make the inhabitants forget their poverty. Yet with all these 


40 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


disadvantages to call him down to humility, a Scotchman is 
one of the proudest things alive. The poor have pride ever 
ready to relieve them. If mankind should happen to despise 
them, they are masters of their own admiration, and that they 
can plentifully bestow upon themselves. 

‘ ‘ From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one ad¬ 
vantage this country enjoys—namely, the gentlemen here are 
much better bred than among us. No such character here as 
our fox-hunters; and they have expressed great surprise when 
I informed them that some men in Ireland of one thousand 
pounds a year spend their whole lives in running after a hare, 
and drinking to be drunk. Truly if such a being, equipped in 
his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they 
would behold him with the same astonishment that a country¬ 
man does King George on horseback. 

“The men here have generally high cheek bones, and are 
lean and swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Now 
that I have mentioned dancing, let me say something of their 
balls, which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters 
the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by the 
ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; in the other 
end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more 
intercourse between the sexes than there is between two 
countries at war. The ladles indeed may ogle, and the gentle¬ 
men sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce. 
At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or in- 
tendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman 
to walk a minuet; which they perform with formality that ap¬ 
proaches to despondence. After five or six couple have thus 
walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each 
gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady 
directress; so they dance much, say nothing, and thus con¬ 
cludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such 
profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the 
Roman matrons in honor of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman 
told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very 
great pedant for my pains. 

“Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love 
Scotland, and everything that belongs to so charming a 
country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my 
head that denies it—that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand 
times finer and handsomer than the Irish. To be sure, now, 
I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


41 


partiality—but tell them flatly, I don’t value them—or their 

fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or-, a potato;—for I say, 

and will maintain it; and as a convincing proof (I am in "a 
great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it them¬ 
selves. But to he less serious; where will you find a language 
so prettily become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? And 
the women here speak it in its highest purity; for instance, 
teach one of your young ladies at home to pronounce the 
‘ Whoar wull I gong? ’ with a becoming widening of mouth, 
and I’ll lay my life they’ll wound every hearer. 

“We have no such character here as a coquet, but alas! how 
many envious prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord 
Kilcoubry’s (don’t be surprised, my lord is but a glover),* when 
the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her beauty 
to her ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equi¬ 
page) passed by in her chariot; her battered husband, or more 
properly the guardian of her charms, sat by her side. Straight 
envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat 
with me, to find faults in her faultless form. ‘For my part,’ 
says the first, ‘ I think what i always thought, that the Duch¬ 
ess has too much of the red in her complexion.’ ‘Madam, I 
am not of your opinion,’ says the second; ‘ I think her face has 
a palish cast too much on the delicate order.’ ‘ And let me tell 
you,’ added the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to 
the size of an issue, ‘that the Duchess has fine lips, but she 
wants a mouth.’ At this every lady drew up her mouth as if 
going to pronounce the letter P. 

“But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women 
with whom I have scarcely any correspondence! There are, 
’tis certain, handsome women here; and ’tis certain they have 
handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and poor 
man is society only for himself; and such society the world 
lets me enjoy in great abundance. Fortune has given you cir¬ 
cumstances, and nature a person to look charming in the eyes 
of the fair. Nor do I envy my dear Bob such blessings, while 
I may sit down and laugh at the world and at myself—the 
most ridiculous object in it. But you see I am grown down¬ 
right splenetic, and perhaps the fit may continue till I receive 


* William Maclellan, who claimed the title, and whose son succeeded in establish* 
ing the claim in 1773. The father is said to have voted at the election of tho six¬ 
teen Peers for Scotland, and to have sold gloves in the lobby at this and other public 
assemblages. 





42 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


answer to this. I know you cannot send me much news 
;om Ballymahon, but such as it is, send it all; everything you 
send will be agreeable to me. 

“Has George Conway put up a sign yet; or John Binley left 
off drinking drams; or Tom Allen got a new wig? But I leave 
you to your own choice what to write. While I live, know 
you have a true friend in yours, etc., etc., 

“Oliver Goldsmith. 

“P.S. Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you 
mind) to your agreeable family, and give my service to my 
mother, if you see her; for, as you express it in Ireland, I have 

a sneaking kindness for her still. Direct to me,-, Student 

in Physic, in Edinburgh.” 

Nothing worthy of preservation appeared from his pen dur¬ 
ing his residence in Edinburgh; and indeed his poetical powers, 
highly as they had been estimated by his friends, had not as 
yet produced anything of superior merit. He made on one oc¬ 
casion a month’s excursion to the Highlands. ‘ ‘ I set out the 
first day on foot,” says he, in a letter to his uncle Contarine, 
“but an ill-natured corn I have on my toe has for the future 
prevented that cheap mode of travelling; so the second day I 
hired a horse about the size of a ram, and he walked away (trot 
he could not) as pensive as his master.” 

During his residence in Scotland his convivial talents gained 
him at one time attentions in a high quarter, which, however, 
he had the good sense to appreciate correctly. ‘ ‘ I have spent,” 
says he, in one of his letters, “more than a fortnight every 
second day at the Duke of Hamilton’s; but it seems they like 
me more as a jester than as a companion, so I disdained so ser¬ 
vile an employment as unworthy my calling as a physician.” 
Here we again find the origin of another passage in his auto¬ 
biography, under the character of the “Man in Black,” where¬ 
in that worthy figures as a flatterer to a great man. ‘ 1 At 
first,” says he, “ I was surprised that the situation of a flat¬ 
terer at a great man’s table could be thought disagreeable; 
there was no great trouole in listening attentively when his 
lordship spoke, and laughing when he looked round for ap¬ 
plause. This, even good manners might have obliged me to 
perform. I found, however, too soon, his lordship was a 
greater dunce than myself, and from that moment flattery was 
at an ond, I now rather aimed at setting him right, than at 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


45 


receiving his absurdities with submission: to flatter those we 
do not know is an easy task; but to flatter our intimate ac¬ 
quaintances, all whose foibles are strongly in our eyes, is 
drudgery insupportable. Every time I now opened my lips 
in praise, my falsehood went to my conscience; his lordship 
soon perceived me to be very unfit for his service: I was 
therefore discharged; my patron at the same time being gra¬ 
ciously pleased to observe that he believed I was tolerably 
good-natured, and had not the least harm in me.” 

After spending two winters at Edinburgh, Goldsmith pre¬ 
pared to finish his medical studies on the Continent, for which 
his uncle Contarine agreed to furnish the funds. “I intend,” 
said he, in a letter to his uncle, “to visit Paris, where the 
great Farheim, Petit, and Du Hamel de Monceau instruct 
their pupils in all the branches of medicine. They speak 
French, and consequently I shall have much the advantage of 
most of my countrymen, as I am perfectly acquainted with 
that language, and few who leave Ireland are so. I shall 
spend the spring and summer in Paris, and the beginning of 
next winter go to Leyden. The great Albums is still alive 
there, and ’twill be proper to go, though only to have it said 
that we have studied in so famous a university. 

“ As I shall not have another opportunity of receiving money 
from your bounty till my return to Ireland, so I have drawn 
for the last sum that I hope I shall ever trouble you for; ’tis 
£20. And now, dear sir, let me here acknowledge the humility 
of the station in which you found me; let me tell how I was 
despised by most, and hateful to myself. Poverty, hopeless 
poverty, was mv lot, and Melancholy was beginning to make 
me her own. When you — but 1 stop here, to inquire how your 
health goes on? How does my cousin Jenny, and has she re¬ 
covered her late complaint? How does my poor Jack Gold¬ 
smith? I fear his disorder is of such a nature as he won’t 
easily recover. I wish, my dear sir, you would make me 
happy by another letter before I go abroad, for there I shall 
hardly hear from you. . . . Give my—how shall I express it? 
Give my earnest love to Mr. and Mrs. Lawder.” 

Mrs. Lawder was Jane, his early playmate—the object of 
his valentine—his first poetical inspiration. She had been 
for some time married. 

Medical instruction, it will be perceived, was the ostensible 
motive for this visit to the Continent, but the real one, in all 
probability, was his long-cherished desire to see foreign parts. 


44 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


This, however, he would not acknowledge even to himself, but 
sought to reconcile his roving propensities with some grand 
moral purpose. “ I esteem the traveller who instructs tlic 
heart,” says he, in one of his subsequent writings, “ but despiso 
him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves 
home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who 
goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of 
curiosity, is only a vagabond.” He, of course, was to travel as 
tt philosopher, and in truth his outfits for a continental tour 
were in character. “I shall carry just £33 to France,” said he, 
“with good store of clothes, shirts, etc., and that with 
economy will suffice.” He forgot to make mention of his flute, 
which it will be found had occasionally to come in play when 
economy could not replenish his purse, nor philosophy find 
him a supper. Thus slenderly provided with money, pru¬ 
dence, or experience, and almost as slightly guarded against 
“hard knocks” as the hero of La Mancha, whose head-piece 
was half iron, half-pasteboard, he made his final sally forth 
upon the world; hoping all things; believing all things: little 
anticipating the checkered ills in store for him; little thinking 
when he penned his valedictory letter to his good uncle Conta- 
rine, that he was never to see him more; never to return after 
all his wandering fco the friend of his infancy; never to revisit 
his early and fondly-remembered haunts at “sweet Lissoy” 
and Ballymahon. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE AGREEABLE FELLOW - PASSENGERS — RISKS FROM FRIENDS 
PICKED UP BY THE WAYSIDE—SKETCHES OF HOLLAND AND 
THE DUTCH—SHIFTS WHILE A POOR STUDENT AT LEYDEN— 
THE TULIP SPECULATION—THE PROVIDENT FLUTE—SOJOURN 
AT PARIS—SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE—TRAVELLING SHIFTS OF A 
PHILOSOPHIC VAGABOND. 

His usual indiscretion attended Goldsmith at the very outset 
of his foreign enterprise. He had intended to take shipping at 
Leith for Holland; but 0:1 arriving at that port he found a ship 
about to sail for Bordeaux, with six agreeable passengers, 
whose acquaintance he had probably made at the inn. He was 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


45 


not a man to resist a sudden impulse; so, instead of embarking 
for Holland, he found himself ploughing the seas on his way to 
the other side of the Continent. Scarcely had the ship been 
two days at sea, when she was driven by stress of weather to 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here “of course” Goldsmith and his 
agreeable fellow-passengers found it expedient to go on shore 
and “refresh themselves after the fatigues of the voyage.” 
“ Of course” they frolicked and made merry until a late hour 
in the evening, when, in the midst of their hilarity, the door 
was burst open, and a sergeant and twelve grenadiers entered 
with fixed bayonets, and took the whole convivial party pri¬ 
soners. 

It seems that the agreeable companions with whom our 
greenhorn had struck up such a sudden intimacy were Scotch¬ 
men in the French service, who had been in Scotland enlisting 
recruits for the French army. 

In vain Goldsmith protested his innocence; he was marched 
off with his fellow-revellers to prison, whence he with diffi¬ 
culty obtained his release at the end of a fortnight. With his 
customary facility, however, at palliating his misadventures, 
he found everything turn out for the best. His imprison¬ 
ment saved‘his life, for during his detention the ship proceeded 
on her voyage, but was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, 
and all on board perished. 

Goldsmith’s second embarkation was for Holland direct, and 
in nine days he arrived at Rotterdam, whence he proceeded, 
without any more deviations, to Leyden. He gives a whimsical 
picture, in one of his letters, of the appearance of the Holland¬ 
ers. “The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature 
from him of former times: he in everything imitates a French¬ 
man but in his easy, disengaged air. He is vastly ceremonious, 
and is, perhaps, exactly what a Frenchman might have been 
in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the 
downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. 
Upon a lank head of hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat, 
laced with black riband; no coat, but seven waistcoats and 
nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his 
armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company 
or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of 
his appetite! why, she wears a large fur cap, with a deal of 
Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she 
puts on two petticoats. 

“A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer 


40 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in 
her hand a stove of coals, which, when she sits, she snugs 
under her petticoats, and at this chimney dozing Strephon 
lights his pipe. ” 

In the same letter he contrasts Scotland and Holland. 
“There hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here it is 
all a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed 
Duchess issuing from a dirty close, and here a dirty Dutchman 
inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip, 
planted in dung; but I can never see a Dutchman in his own 
house but I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated 
to an ox.” 

The country itself awakened his admiration. “Nothing,” 
said he, “can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eyes, fine 
houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottoes, vistas, present them¬ 
selves ; but when you enter their towns you are charmed be¬ 
yond description. No misery is to be seen here; every one is 
usefully employed.” And again, in his noble description in 
“The Traveller:” 

“ To men of other minds my fancy flies, 

Imbosom'd in the deep -where Holland lies. 

Methinks her patient sons before me stand, 

Where the broad ocean leans against the land, 

And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 

Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride. 

Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, 

The firm connected bulwark seems to grow; 

Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar, 

Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. 

While the pent ocean, rising o’er the pile, 

Sees an amphibious world before him smile; 

The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale, 

The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail. 

The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, 

A new creation rescued from his reign.” 

He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures 
of Gaubius on chemistry and Albinus on anatomy; though his 
studies are said to have been miscellaneous, and directed to 
literature rather than science. The thirty-three pounds with 
which he had set out on his travels were soon consumed, and 
he was put to many a shift to meet his expenses until his pre¬ 
carious remittances should arrive. He had a good friend on 
these occasions in a fellow-student and countryman, named 
Ellis, who afterward rose to eminence as a physician. He 
used frequently to loan small sums to Goldsmith, which were 
always scrupulously paid. Ellis discovered the innate merits 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


4 7 


of the poor awkward student, and used to declare in after life 
that it was a common remark in Leyden, that in all the pecu¬ 
liarities of Goldsmith, an elevation of mind was to be noted; a 
philosophical tone and manner; the feelings of a gentleman, 
and the language and information of a scholar.” 

Sometimes, in his emergencies, Goldsmith undertook to 
teach the English language. It is true he was ignorant of 
the Dutch, but he had a smattering of the French, picked 
up among the Irish priests at Ballymahon. He depicts his 
whimsical embarrassment in this respect, in his account in 
the Vicar of Wakefield of the philosophical vagabo, cl who 
went to Holland to teach the natives English, without know¬ 
ing a word of their own language. Sometimes, when sorely 
pinched, and sometimes, perhaps, when flush, he resorted to 
the gambling tables, which in those days abounded in Holland. 
His good friend Ellis repeatedly warned him against this un¬ 
fortunate propensity, but in vain. It brought its own cure, or 
rather its own punishment, by stripping him of every shilling. 

Ellis once more stepped in to his relief with a true Irishman’s 
generosity, but with more considerateness than generally char¬ 
acterizes an Irishman, for he only granted pecuniary aid on 
condition of his quitting the sphere of danger. Goldsmith 
gladly consented to leave Holland, being anxious to visit other 
parts. He intended to proceed to Paris and pursue his studies 
there, and was furnished by his friend with money for the 
journey. Unluckily, he rambled into the garden of a florist 
just before quitting Leyden. The tulip mania was still preva¬ 
lent in Holland, and some species of that splendid flower 
brought immense prices. In wandering through the garden 
Goldsmith recollected that his uncle Contarine was a tulip 
fancier. The thought suddenly struck him that here was an 
opportunity of testifying, in a delicate manner, his sense of 
that generous uncle’s past kindnesses. In an instant his hand 
was in his pocket; a number of choice and costly tulip-root:; 
were purchased and packed up for Mr. Contarine; and it was 
not until he had paid for them that he bethought himself that 
he had spent all the money borrowed for his travelling ex¬ 
penses. Too proud, however, to give up his journey, and too 
shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend’s liberality, 
he determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and 
good luck for the means of getting forward; and it is said that 
he actually set off on a tour of the Continent, in February, 
1755 , with but one spare shirt, a flute, and a single guinea. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



Blessed,” says one of liis biographers, “with a good consti¬ 
tution, an adventurous spirit, and with that thoughtless, or, 
perhaps, happy disposition which takes no care for to-morrow, 
he continued his travels for a long time in spite of innumerable 
privations.” In his amusing narrative of the adventures of a 
“Philosophic Vagabond” in the “Vicar of Wakefield,” we 
find shadowed out the expedients he pursued. “I had some 
knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice; I now turned 
what was once my amusement into a present means oj- sub¬ 
sistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, 
and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very 
merry, for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their 
wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house toward 
nightfall, I played one of my merriest tunes, and that pro¬ 
cured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day; 
but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to entertain 
persons of a higher rank, they always thought my perform¬ 
ance odious, and never made me any return for m»y endeavors 
to please them.” 

At Paris he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, then 
in great vogue, where he says he witnessed as bright a circle 
of beauty as graced the court of Versailles. His love of 
theatricals, also, led him to attend the performances of the 
celebrated actress Mademoiselle Clairon, with whPh he was 
greatly delighted. He seems to have looked upon the state of 
society with the eye of a philosopher, but to have read the 
signs of the times with the prophetic eye of a poet. In his 
rambles about the environs of Paris he was struck with the 
immense quantities of game running about almost in a tame 
state; and saw in those costly and rigid preserves for the 
amusement and luxury of the privileged few a sure “badge of 
the slavery of the people.” This slavery he predicted was 
drawing toward a close. “ When I consider that these parlia¬ 
ments, the members of which are all created by the court, and 
the presidents of which can only act by immediate direction, 
presume even to mention privileges and freedom, who till of 
late received directions from the throne with implicit humi¬ 
lity ; when this is considered, I cannot help fancying that the 
genius of Freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If 
they have but three weak monarchs more successively on the 
throne, the mask will be laid aside, and the country will 
certainly once more be free.” Events have testified to the 
sage forecast of the poet, 


0L1 VK.ll GOLDSMITH. 


49 


During a brief sojourn in Paris he appears to have gained 
access to valuable society, and to have had the honor and 
pleasure of making the acquaintance of Voltaire; of whom, in 
after years, he wrote a memoir. “ As a companion,” says he, 
‘ ‘ no man ever exceeded him when he pleased to lead the con¬ 
versation ; which, however, was not always the case. In com¬ 
pany which he either disliked or despised, few could be more 
reserved than he; but when he was warmed in discourse, and 
got over a hesitating manner, which sometimes he was subject 
do, it was rapture to hear him. His meagre visage seemed 
insensibly to gather beauty: every muscle in it had meaning, 
and his eye beamed with unusual brightness. The person who 
writes this memoir,” continues he, ‘‘remembers to have seen 
him in a select company of wits of both sexes at Paris, when 
the subject happened to turn upon English taste and learning. 
Fontenelle (then nearly a hundred years old), who was of the 
party, and who being unacquainted with the language or au¬ 
thors of the country he undertook to condemn, with a spirit 
truly vulgar began to revile both. Diderot, who liked the 
English, and knew something of their literary pretensions, 
attempted to vindicate their poetry and learning, but with 
unequal abilities. The company quickly perceived that Fonie- 
nelle was superior in the dispute, and were surprised at the 
silence which Voltaire had preserved all the former part of the 
night, particularly as the conversation happened to turn upon 
one of his favorite topics. Fontenelle continued his triumph 
until about twelve o’clock, when Voltaire appeared at last 
roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. 
He began his defence with the utmost defiance mixed with 
spirit, and now and then let fall the finest strokes of raillery 
upon his antagonist; and his harangue lasted till three in the 
morning. I must confess that, whether from national par¬ 
tiality or from the elegant sensibility of his manner, I never 
was so charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory 
as he gained in this dispute.” Goldsmith’s ramblings took him 
into Germany and Switzerland, from which last mentioned 
country he sent to his brother in Ireland the first brief sketch, 
afterward amplified into his poem of the “Traveller.” 

At Geneva he became travelling tutor to a mongrel young 
gentleman, son of a London pawnbroker, who had been sud¬ 
denly elevated into fortune and absurdity by the death of an 
uncle. The youth, before setting up for a gentleman, had been 
an attorney’s apprentice, and was an arrant pettifogger ii? 


50 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


money matters. Never were two beings more illy assorted 
than he and Goldsmith. We may form an idea of the tutor 
and the pupil from the following extract from the narrative of 
the “ Philosophic Vagabond.” 

“ I was to be the young gentleman’s governor, but with a 
proviso that he should always be permitted to govern himself. 
My pupil, in fact, understood the art of guiding in money con¬ 
cerns much better than I. He was heir to a fortune of about 
two hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West 
Indies; and his guardians, to qualify him for the management of 
it had bound him apprentice to an attorney. Thus avarice was 
his prevailing passion; all his questions on the road were ho^ 
money might be saved—which was the least expensive course 
of travel—whether anything could be bought that would turn 
to account when disposed of again in London. Such curiosities 
on the way as could be seen for nothing he was ready enough 
to look at; but if the sight of them was to be paid for, he 
usually asserted that he had been told that they were not 
worth seeing. He never paid a bill that he would not observe 
how amazingly expensive travelling was; and all this though 
not yet twenty-one.” 

In this sketch Goldsmith undoubtedly shadows forth his an¬ 
noyances as travelling tutor to this concrete young gentleman, 
compounded of the pawnbroker, the pettifogger, and the West 
Indian heir, with an overlaying of the city miser. They had 
continual difficulties on all points of expense until they reached 
Marseilles, where both were glad to separate. 

Once more on foot, but freed from the irksome duties of 
“bear leader,” and with some of his pay, as tutor, in his 
pocket, Goldsmith continued his half-vagrant peregrinations 
through part of France and Piedmont, and some of the Italian 
States. He had acquired, as has been shown, a habit of shift¬ 
ing along and living by expedients, and a new one presented 
itself in Italy. ‘ ‘ My skill in music, ” says he, in the Philosophic 
Vagabond, “ could avail me nothing in a country where every 
peasant was a better musician than I; but by this time I had 
acquired another talent, which answered my purpose as well, 
and this was a skill in disputation. In all the foreign univer¬ 
sities and convents there are, upon certain days, philosophical 
theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for 
which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can 
claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. ” 
Though a poor wandering scholar, his reception in these 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 


51 


learned piles was as free from humiliation as in the cottages of 
the peasantry. “ With the members of these establishments,” 
said he, “I could converse on topics of literature, and then 1 
always forgot the meanness of my circumstances .” 

At Padua, where he remained some months, he is said to 
have taken his medical degree. It is probable he was brought 
to a pause in this city by the death of his uncle Contarine, who 
had hitherto assisted him in his wanderings by occasional, 
though, of course, slender remittances. Deprived of this source 
of supplies, he wrote to his friends in Ireland, and especially to 
his brother-in-law, Hod son, describing his destitute situation. 
His letters brought him neither money nor reply. It appears 
from subsequent correspondence that his brother-in-law actu¬ 
ally exerted himself to raise a subscription for his assistance 
among his relatives, friends, and acquaintance, but without 
success. Their faith and hope in him were most probably at 
an end; as yet he had disappointed them at every point, he 
had given none of the anticipated proofs of talent, and they 
were too poor to support what they may have considered the 
wandering propensities of a heedless spendthrift. 

Thus left to his own precarious resources, Goldsmith gave 
up all further wandering in Italy, without visiting the south, 
though Rome and Naples must have held out powerful attrac¬ 
tions to one of his poetical cast. Once more resuming his pil¬ 
grim staff, he turned his face toward England, “walking along 
from city to city, examining mankind more nearly, and seeing 
both sides of the picture.” In traversing France his flute— 
his magic flute!—was once more in requisition, as we may con¬ 
clude, by the following passage in his Traveller: 

“ Gay. sprightly land of mirth and social ease. 

Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please, 

How often have I led thy sportive choir 
With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire! 

Where shading elms along the margin grew. 

And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew; 

And haply though my harsh note falt’ring still, 

But mocked all tune, and marr’d the dancer’s skill; 

Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, 

And dance forgetful of the noontide hour. 

Alike all ages: Dames of ancient days 

Have led their children through the mirthful maze, 

And the gay grandsire, skill’d in gestic lore, 

Has frisk’d beneath the burden of three-score.” 


52 


OLIVER QOLDSMITH. 


CHAPTER VI. 


LANDING IN ENGLAND—SHIFTS OF A MAN WITHOUT MONEY—THE 
PESTLE AND MORTAR—THEATRICALS IN A BARN—LAUNCH UPON 
LONDON—A CITY NIGHT SCENE—STRUGGLES WITH PENURY- 
MISERIES OF A TUTOR—A DOCTOR IN THE SUBURB—POOR PRAC¬ 
TICE AND SECOND-HAND FINERY—A TRAGEDY IN EMBRYO—PRO¬ 
JECT OF THE WRITTEN MOUNTAINS. 

After two years spent in roving about the Continent, “pur¬ 
suing novelty,” as he said, “and losing content,” Goldsmith 
landed at Dover early in 1756. He appears to have had no 
definite plan of action. The death of his uncle Contarine, and 
the neglect of his relatives and friends to reply to his letters, 
seem to have produced in him a temporary feeling of loneli¬ 
ness and destitution, and his only thought was to get to Lon¬ 
don and throw himself upon the world. But how was he to 
get there? His purse was empty. England was to him as 
completely a foreign land as any part of the Continent, and 
where on earth is a penniless stranger more destitute? His 
flute and his philosophy were no longer of any avail; the Eng¬ 
lish boors cared nothing for music; there were no convents; 
and as to the learned and the clergy, not one of them would 
give a vagrant scholar a supper and night’s lodging for the best 
thesis that ever was argued. “You may easily imagine,” 
says he, in a subsequent letter to his brother-in-law, “ what 
difficulties I had to encounter, left as I was without friends, 
recommendations, money, or impudence, and that in a country 
where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep me un¬ 
employed. Many, in such circumstances, would have had 
recourse to the friar’s cord or the suicide’s halter. But, with 
all my follies, I had principle to resist the one, and resolution 
to combat the other.” 

He applied at one place, we are told, for employment in the 
shop of a country apothecary; but all his medical science 
gathered in foreign universities could not gain him the man¬ 
agement of a pestle and mortar. He even resorted, it is said, 
to the stage as a temporary expedient, and figured in low com¬ 
edy at a country town in Kent. This accords with his last 
shift of the Philosophic Vagabond, and with the knowledge of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


63 


country theatricals displayed in his “Adventures of a Stroll¬ 
ing Player,” or may be a story suggested by them. All this 
part of his career, however, in which he must have trod the 
lowest paths of humility, are only to be conjectured from 
vague traditions, or scraps of autobiography gleaned from his 
miscellaneous writings. 

At length we find him launched on the great metropolis, or 
rather drifting about its streets, at night, in the gloomy month 
of February, with but a few half-pence in his pocket. The 
deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than 
the streets of London at such a time, and to a stranger in such 
a plight. Do we want a picture as an illustration? We have 
it in his own words, and furnished, doubtless, from his own 
experience. 

“The clock has just struck two; what a gloom hangs all 
around! no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the 
distant watch-dog. How few appear in those streets, which 
but some few hours ago were crowded! But who are those 
who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose 
from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent? They are 
strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are 
too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too 
great even for pity. Some are without the covering even of 
rags, and others emaciated with disease; the world has dis¬ 
claimed them; society turns its back upon their distress, and 
has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shiv¬ 
ering femades have once seen happier days , and been flattered 
into beauty. They are now turned out to meet the severity of 
winter. Perhaps now, lying at the doors of their betrayers, 
they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debau¬ 
chees who may curse, but will not relieve them. 

“ Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of 
wretches I cannot relieve! Poor houseless creatures! The 
world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief.” 

Poor houseless Goldsmith! we may here ejaculate—to what 
shifts he must have been driven to find shelter and sustenance 
for himself in this his first venture into London! Many years 
afterward, in the days of his social elevation, he startled a 
polite circle at Sir J oshua Reynolds’s by humorously dating an 
anecdote about the time he ‘ ‘ lived among the beggars of Axe 
Lane.” Such may have been the desolate quarters with which 
he was fain to content himself when thus adrift upon the town, 
with but a few half-pence in his pocket. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


54 

The first authentic trace we have of him in this new part of 
his career, is filling the situation of an usher to a school, and 
even this employ he obtained with some difficulty, after a ref¬ 
erence for a character to his friends in the University of Dub¬ 
lin. In the Vicar of Wakefield he makes George Primrose 
undergo a whimsical catechism concerning the requisites for an 
usher. “Have you been bred apprentice to the business?” 
“No.” “ Then you won’t do for a school. Can you dress the 
boys’hair?” “No.” “Then you won’t do for a school. Can 

you lie three in a bed?” “No.” “Then you will never do for 
a school. Have you a good stomach?” “Yes.” “Then you 
will by no means do for a school. I have been an usher in a 
boarding-school myself, and may I die of an anodyne necklace, 
but I had rather be under-turnkey at Newgate. I was up 
early and late; I was browbeat by the master, hated for my 
ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys.” 

Goldsmith lemained but a short time in this situation, and 
to the mortifications experienced there, we doubtless owe the 
picturings given in his writings of the hardships of an usher’s 
life. “He is generally,” says he, “the laughing-stock of the 
school. Every trick is played upon him; the oddity of his 
manner, his dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal ridi¬ 
cule; the master himself now and then cannot avoid joining in 
the laugh; and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill 
usage, lives in a state of war with all the family.”—“He is 
obliged, perhaps, to sleep in the same bed with the French 
teacher, who disturbs him for an hour every night in papering 
and filleting his hair, and stinks worse than a carrion with his 
rancid pomatums, when he lays his head beside him on the 
bolster.” 

His next shift was as assistant in the laboratory of a chemist 
near Fish Street Hill. After remaining here a few months, he 
heard that Dr. Sleigh, who had been his friend and fellow 
student at Edinburgh, was in London. Eager to meet with a 
friendly face in this land of strangers, he immediately called 
on him; “but though it was Sunday, and it is to be supposed I 
was in my best clothes, Sleigh scarcely knew me—such is the 
tax the unfortunate pay to poverty. However, when he did 
recollect me, I found his heart as warm as ever, and he shared 
his purse and friendship with me during his continuance in 
London.” 

Through the advice and assistance of Dr. Sleigh, he now 
commenced the practice of medicine, but in a small way. in 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 


55 


Bankside, Southwark, and chiefly among the poor; for he 
wanted the figure, address, polish, and management, to succeed 
among the rich. His old schoolmate and college companion. 
Beatty, who used to aid him with his purse at the university* 
met him about this time, decked out in the tarnished finery of 
a second-hand suit of green and gold, with a shirt and neck¬ 
cloth of a fortnight’s wear. 

Poor Goldsmith endeavored to assume a prosperous air in 
the eyes of his early associate. “He was practising physic,” 
he said, “and doing very well!” At this moment poverty was 
pinching him to the bone in spite of his practice and his dirty 
finery. His fees were necessarily small, and ill paid, and he 
was fain to seek some precarious assistance from his pen. 
Here his quondam fellow-student, Dr. Sleigh, was again of 
service, introducing him to some of the booksellers, who gave 
him occasional, though starveling, employment. According to 
tradition, however, his most efficient patron just now was a 
journeyman printer, one of his poor patients of Bankside, who 
had formed a good opinion of his talents, and perceived his 
poverty and his literary shifts. The printer was in the employ 
of Mr. Samuel Richardson, the author of Pamela, Clarissa, and 
Sir Charles Grandison; who combined the novelist and the 
publisher, and was in flourishing circumstances. Through the 
journeyman’s intervention Goldsmith is said to have become 
Acquainted with Richardson, who employed him as reader and 
corrector of the press, at his printing establishment in Salis¬ 
bury Court; an occupation which he alternated with his medi¬ 
cal duties. 

Being admitted occasionally to Richardson’s parlor, he began 
to form literary acquaintances, among whom the most impor¬ 
tant was Dr. Young, the author of Night Thoughts, a poem in 
the height of fashion. It is not probable, however, that much 
familiarity took place at the time between the literary lion of 
the day and the poor JEseulapius of Bankside, the humble cor¬ 
rector of the press. Still the communion with literary men 
had its effect to set his imagination teeming. Dr. Farr, one of 
his Edinburgh fellow-students, who was at London about this 
time, attending the hospitals and lectures, gives us an amusing 
account of Goldsmith in his literary character. 

“Early in January he called upon me one morning before I 
was up, and, on my entering the room, I recognized my old 
acquaintance, dressed in a rusty, full-trimmed black suit, with 
his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the 


OJA VEU G OLD SMI 1U. 


56 

poet in Garrick’s farce of Lethe. After we had finished our 
breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he 
said had been brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded 
inability, when he began to read; and every part on which I 
expressed a doubt as to the propriety was immediately blotted 
out. I then most earnestly pressed him not to trust to my 
judgment, but to take the opinion of persons better qualified 
to decide on dramatic compositions. He now told me he had 
submitted his productions, so far as he had written, to Mr. 
Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I peremptorily 
declined offering another criticism on the performance.” 

From the graphic description given of him by Dr. Farr, it 
will be perceived that the tarnished finery of green and gold 
had been succeeded by a professional suit of black, to which, 
we are told, were added the wig and cane indispensable to 
medical doctors in those days. The coat was a second hand 
one, of rusty velvet, with a patch on the left breast, which he 
adroitly covered with his three-cornered hat during his medical 
visits; and we have an amusing anecdote of his contest of 
courtesy with a patient who persisted in endeavoring to relievo 
him from the hat, which only made him press it more devoutly 
to his heart. 

Nothing further has ever been heard of the tragedy men¬ 
tioned by Dr. Farr; it was probably never completed. Tho 
same gentleman speaks of a strange Quixotic scheme which 
Goldsmith had in contemplation at the time, “of going to 
decipher the inscriptions on the ivritten mountains, though he 
was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which 
they might be supposed to be written. “The salary of three 
hundred pounds,” adds Dr. Farr, “ which had been left for the 
purpose, was the temptation.” This was probably one of 
many dreamy projects with which his fervid brain was apt to 
teem. On such subjects he was prone to talk vaguely and 
magnificently, but inconsiderately, from a kindled imagination 
rather than a well-instructed judgment. He had always a 
great notion of expeditions to the East, and wonders to be seen 
and effected in the oriental countries. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


57 


CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE—KINDNESS TO SCHOOLBOYS—PERTNESS IN 

RETURN — EXPENSIVE CHARITIES — THE GRIFFITHS AND THE 

“MONTHLY REVIEW”—TOILS OF A LITERARY HACK—RUPTURE 

WITH THE GRIFFITHS. 

Among the most cordial of Goldsmith’s intimates in London 
during this time of nrecarious struggle were certain of his 
former fellow-students in Edinburgh. One of these was the 
•son of a Doctor Milner, a dissenting minister, who kept a 
classical school of eminence at Peckham, in Surrey. Young 
Milner had a favorable opinion of Goldsmith’s abilities and 
attainments, and cherished for him that good will which his 
genial nature seems ever to have inspired among his school 
and college associates. His father falling ill, the young man 
negotiated with Goldsmith to take temporary charge of the 
school. The latter readily consented; for he was discouraged 
by the slow growth of medical reputation and practice, and as 
yet had no confidence in the coy smiles of the muse. Laying 
by his wig and cane, therefore, and once more wielding the 
ferule, he resumed the character of the pedagogue, and for 
some time reigned as vicegerent over the academy at Peckham. 
He appears to have been well treated by both Dr. Milner and 
his wife, and became a favorite with the scholars from his 
easy, indulgent good nature. He mingled in their sports, told 
them droll stories, played on the flute for their amusement, 
and spent his money in treating them to sweetmeats and other 
schoolboy dainties. His familiarity was sometimes carried too 
far; he indulged in boyish pranks and practical jokes, and 
drew upon himself retorts in kind, which, however, he bore 
with great good humor. Once, indeed, he was touched to the 
quick by a piece of schoolboy pertness. After playing on the 
flute, he spoke with enthusiasm of music, as delightful in itself, 
and as a valuable accomplishment for a gentleman, whereupon 
a youngster, with a glance at his ungainly person, wished to 
know if he considered himself a gentleman. Poor Goldsmith, 
feelingly alive to the awkwardness of his appearance and the 
humility of his situation, winced at this unthinking sneer, 
which long rankled in his mind. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


58 

As usual, while in Dr. Milner’s employ, his benevolent feel- 
ings were a heavy tax upon his purse, for he never could 
resist a tale of distress, and was apt to be fleeced by every 
sturdy beggar; so that, between his charity and his munifi¬ 
cence, he was generally in advance of his slender salary. 
“You had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me take care of your 
money,” said Mrs. Milner one day, “as I do for some of the 
young gentlemen.”—“In truth, madam, there is equal need I” 
was the good-humored reply. 

Dr. Milner was a man of some literary pretensions, and wrote 
occasionally for the Monthly Review , of which a bookseller, by 
the name of Griffiths, was proprietor. This work was an 
advocate for Whig principles, and had been in prosperous 
existence for nearly eight years. Of late, however, periodicals- 
had multiplied exceedingly, and a formidable Tory rival had 
started up in the Critical Review , published by Archibald Ham¬ 
ilton, a bookseller, and aided by the powerful and popular pen 
of Dr. Smollett. Griffiths was obliged to recruit his forces. 
While so doing he met Goldsmith, a humble occupant of a seat 
at Dr. Milner’s table, and was struck with remarks on men and 
books, which fell from him in the course of conversation. He 
took occasion to sound him privately as to his inclination and 
capacity as a reviewer, and was furnished by him with speci¬ 
mens of his literary and critical talents. They proved satis¬ 
factory. The consequence was that Goldsmith once more 
changed his mode of life, and in April, 1757, became a contribu¬ 
tor to the Monthly Review , at a small fixed salary, with board 
and lodging, and accordingly took up his abode with Mr. 
Griffiths, at the sign of the Dunciad, Paternoster Eow. As 
usual we trace this phase of his fortunes in his semi-fictitious 
writings; his sudden transmutation of the pedagogue into the 
author being humorously set forth in the case of “ George Prim¬ 
rose,” in the “ Yicar of Wakefield.” “Come,” says George’s 
adviser, “I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning; 
what do you think of commencing author like me? You have 
read in books, no doubt, of men of genius starving at the 
trade; at present I’ll show you forty very dull fellows about 
town that live by it in opulence. All honest, jog-trot men 
who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics 1 
and are praised: men, sir, who, had they been bred cobblers’ 
would all their lives only have mended shoes, but never made 
them.’’ “ Finding” (says George) “that there was no great de¬ 
gree of gentility affixed to the character of an usher, I resolved 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


to accept his proposal; and having the highest respect for 
literature, hailed the antiqua mater of Grub Street with rev¬ 
erence. I thought it my glory to pursue a track which 
Pry den and Otway trod before me.” Mas, Dryden struggled 
with indigence all his days; and Otway, it is said, fell a vic¬ 
tim to famine in his thirty-fifth year, being strangled by a roll 
of bread, which he devoured with the voracity of a starving 
man. 

In Goldsmith’s experience the track soon proved a thorny 
one. Griffiths was a hard business man, of shrewd, worldly 
good sense, but little refinement or cultivation. He meddled, 
or rather muddled with literature, too, in a business way, 
altering and modifying occasionally the writings of his con¬ 
tributors, and in this he was aided by his wife, who, according 
to Smollett, was “an antiquated female critic and a dabbler in 
the j Review.” Such was the literary vassalage to which Gold¬ 
smith had unwarily subjected himself. A diurnal drudgery 
was imposed on him, irksome to his indolent habits, and at¬ 
tended by circumstances humiliating to his pride. He had to 
write daily from nine o’clock until two, and often throughout 
the day; whether in the vein or not, and on subjects dictated 
by his taskmaster, however foreign to his taste; in a word, he 
was treated as a mere literary hack. But this was not the 
worst; it was the critical supervision of Griffiths and his wife 
which grieved him: the “illiterate, bookselling Griffiths,” as 
Smollett called them, “who presumed to revise, alter, and 
amend the articles contributed to their Review. Thank 
heaven,” crowed Smollet, “the Critical Review is not written 
under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife. Its principal 
writers are independent of each other, unconnected with book¬ 
sellers, and unawed by old women!” 

This literary vassalage, however, did not last long. The 
bookseller became more and more exacting. He accused his 
hack writer of idleness; of abandoning his writing-desk and 
literary workshop at an early hour of the day; and of assum¬ 
ing a tone and manner above his situation. Goldsmith, in 
return, charged him with impertinence; his wife with mean¬ 
ness and parsimony in her household treatment of him, and 
both of literary meddling and marring. The engagement was 
broken off at the end of five months, by mutual consent, and 
without any violent rupture, as it will be found they afterward 
had occasional dealings with each other. 

Though Goldsmith was now nearly thirty years of age, he 


60 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


had produced nothing to give him a decided reputation. He 
was as yet a mere writer for bread. The articles he had con¬ 
tributed to the Review were anonymous, and were never 
avowed by him. They have since been, for the most part, 
ascertained; and though thrown off hastily, often treating on 
subjects of temporary interest, and marred by the Griffith in¬ 
terpolations, they are still characterized by his sound, easy 
good sense, and the genial graces of his style. Johnson ob¬ 
served that Goldsmith’s genius flowered late; he should have 
said it flowered early, but was late in bringing its fruit to 
maturity. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

NEWBERY, OF PICTURE-BOOK MEMORY—HOW TO KEEP UP AP¬ 
PEARANCES—MISERIES OF AUTHORSHIP—A POOR RELATION— 
LETTER TO HODSON. 

Being now known in the publishing world, Goldsmith began 
to find casual employment in various quarters; among others 
he wrote occasionally for the Literary Magazine, a production 
set on foot by Mr. John Newbery, bookseller, St. Paul’s 
Churchyard, renowned in nursery literature throughout the 
latter half of the last century for his picture-books for children. 
Newbery was a worthy, intelligent, kind-hearted man, and a 
seasonable though cautious friend to authors, relieving them 
with small loans when in pecuniary difficulties, though always 
taking care to be well repaid by the labor of their pens. Gold¬ 
smith introduces him in a humorous yet friendly manner in 
his novel of the Vicar of Wakefield. “ This person was no 
other than the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul’s Church¬ 
yard, who has written so many little books for children; he 
called himself their friend; but he was the friend of all man¬ 
kind. He was no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be 
gone; for he was ever on business of importance, and was at 
that time actually compiling materials for the history of one 
Mr. Thomas Trip. I immediately recollected this good-natured 
man’s red-pimpled face.” 

Besides his literary job work, Goldsmith also resumed his 
medical practice, but with very trifling success. The scanti- 



OLIVm GOLDSMITH. 


61 


ness of his purse still obliged him to live in obscure lodgings 
somewhere in the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet Street; 
but his extended acquaintance and rising importance caused 
him to consult appearances. He adopted an expedient, then 
very common, and still practised in London among those who 
have to tread the narrow path between pride and poverty; 
while he burrowed in lodging^ suited to his means, he “hailed,” 
as it is termed, from the Temple Exchange Coffee-house near 
Temple Bar. Here he received his medical calls; hence he 
dated his letters, and here he passed much of his leisure hours, 
conversing with the frequenters of the place. ‘ ‘ Thirty pounds 
a year,” said a poor Irish painter, who understood the art of 
shifting, ‘ ‘ is enough to enable a man to live in London with¬ 
out being contemptible. Ten pounds will find him in clothes 
and linen; he can live in a garret on eighteen pence a week; 
hail from a coffee-house, where, by occasionally spending 
threepence, he may pass some hours each day m good com¬ 
pany ; he may breakfast on bread and milk for a penny; dine 
for sixpence; do without supper; and on clean-shirt-day he 
may go abroad and pay visits.” 

Goldsmith seems to have taken a leaf from this poor devil’s 
manual in respect to the coffee-house at least. Indeed, coffee¬ 
houses in those days were the resorts of wits and literati, where 
the topics of the day were gossiped over, and the affairs of 
literature and the drama discussed and criticised. In this way 
he enlarged the circle of his intimacy, which now embraced 
several names of notoriety. 

Do we want a picture of Goldsmith’s experience in this part 
of his career? we have it in his observations on the life of an 
author in the “ Inquiry into the state of polite learning ,” pub¬ 
lished some years afterward. 

“The author, unpatronized by the great, has naturally re¬ 
course to the bookseller. There cannot, perhaps, be imagined 
a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the in¬ 
terest of the one to allow as little for writing, and for the othei 
to write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations 
and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavors. 
In these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame; writes 
for bread; and for that only imagination is seldom called in. 
He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phleg¬ 
matic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his 
mistress by falling asleep in her lap.” 

Again. “Those who are unacquainted with the world are 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


t>2 

apt to fancy the man of wit as leading a very agreeable life. 
They conclude, perhaps, that he is attended with silent ad mi' 
ration, and dictates to the rest of mankind with all the elo- 
quence of conscious superiority. Very different is his present 
situation. He is called an author, and all know that an author 
is a thing only to be laughed at. His person, not his jest, be 
comes the mirth of the company. At his approach the most 
fat, unthinking face brightens into malicious meaning. Even 
aldermen laugh, and avenge on him the ridicule which was 
lavished on their forefathers. . . . The poet’s poverty is a 

standing topic of contempt. His writing for bread is an urn 
pardonable offence. Perhaps of all mankind, an author in 
these times is used most hardly. We keep him poor, and yet 
revile his poverty. We reproach him for living by his wit, 
and yet allow him no other means to live. His taking refuge 
in garrets and cellars has of late been violently objected to 
him, and that by men who, I hope, are more apt to pity than 
insult his distress. Is poverty a careless fault? No doubt he 
knows how to prefer a bottle of champagne to the nectar of 
the neighboring ale-house, or a venison pasty to a plate of po¬ 
tatoes. Want of delicacy is not in him, but in those who deny 
him the opportunity of making an elegant choice. Wit cer¬ 
tainly is the property of those who have it, nor should we be 
displeased if it is the only property a man sometimes has. We 
must not underrate him who uses it for subsistence, and flees 
from the ingratitude of the age, even to a bookseller for re¬ 
dress.” . . . 

“ If the author be necessary among us, let us treat him with 
proper consideration as a child of the public, not as a rent- 
charge on the community. And indeed a child of the public 
he is in all respects; for while so well able to direct others, how 
incapable is he frequently found of guiding himself. His sim¬ 
plicity exposes him to all the insidious approaches of cunning; 
his sensibility, to the slightest invasions of contempt. Though 
possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected bursts 
of an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant as to 
agonize under the slightest disappointment. Broken rest, 
tasteless meals, and causeless anxieties shorten life, and render 
it unfit for active employments; prolonged vigils and intense 
application still farther contract his span, and make his timo 
glide insensibly away.” 

While poor Goldsmith was thus struggling with the difficul¬ 
ties and discouragements which in those days beset the path of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


63 


an author, his friends in Ireland received accounts of his lite¬ 
rary success and of the distinguished acquaintances he was 
making. This was enough to put the wise heads at Lissoy and 
Ballymahon in a ferment of conjectures. With the exaggera¬ 
ted notions of provincial relatives concerning the family great 
man in the metropolis, some of Goldsmith’s poor kindred pic¬ 
tured him to themselves seated in high places, clothed in purple 
and fine linen, and hand and glove with the giver of gifts and 
dispensers of patronage. Accordingly, he was one day sur¬ 
prised at the sudden apparition, in his miserable lodging, of his 
younger brother Charles, a raw youth of twenty-one, endowed 
with a double share of the family heedlessness, and who ex¬ 
pected to be forthwith helped into some snug by-path to for¬ 
tune by one or other of Oliver’s great friends. Charles was 
sadly disconcerted on learning that, so far from being able to 
provide for others, his brother could scarcely take care of him¬ 
self. He looked round with a rueful eye on the poet’s quarters, 
and could not help expressing his surprise and disappointment 
at finding him no better off. “All in good time, my dear 
boy,” replied poor Goldsmith, with infinite good-humor; “I 
shall be richer by and by. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his 
poem of the ‘ Campaign ’ in a garret in the Hay market, three 
stories high, and you see I am not come to that yet, for I have 
only got to the second story.” 

Charles Goldsmith did not remain long to embarrass his bro¬ 
ther in London. With the same roving disposition and incon¬ 
siderate temper of Oliver, he suddenly departed in an humble 
capacity to seek his fortune in the West Indies, and nothing 
was heard of him for above thirty years, when, after having 
been given up as dead by his friends, he made his reappearance 
in England. 

Shortly after his departure, Goldsmith wrote a letter to his 
brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson, Esq., of which the following is 
an extract; it was partly intended, no doubt, to dissipate any 
further illusions concerning his fortunes which might float on 
the magnificent imagination of his friends in Ballymahon. 

“I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As 
there is nothing in it at which I should blush, or which man¬ 
kind could censure, I see no reason for making it a secret. In 
short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little 
reputation as a poet, I make a shift to five. Nothing is more 
apt to introduce us to the gates of the muses than poverty; but 
it were well if thev only left us at the door. The mischief 


0L1 VEll G OLD SMI TIL 


is they sometimes choose to give us their company to the 
entertainment; and want, instead of being gentleman-usher, 
often turns master of the ceremonies. 

“Thus, upon learning I write, no doubt you imagine I starve; 
and the name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. 
In this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my 
friends. But, whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or 
four pairs of stairs high, I still remember them with ardor; nay, 
my very country comes in for a share of my affection. Un¬ 
accountable fondness for country, this maladie du pais , as the 
French call it! Unaccountable that he should still have an 
affection for a place, who never, when in it, received above 
common civility; who never brought anything out of it except 
his brogue and his blunders. Surely my affection is equally 
ridiculous with the Scotchman’s, who refused to be cured of the 
itch because it made him unco’ thoughtful of his wife and 
bonny Inverary. 

‘ £ But now, to be serious: let me ask myself what gives me a 
wish to see Ireland again. The country is a fine one, perhaps? 
No. There are good company in Ireland? No. The conversa¬ 
tion there is generally made up of a smutty toast or a bawdy 
song; the vivacity supported by some humble cousin, who had 
just folly enough to earn his dinner. Then, perhaps, there is 
more wit and learning among the Irish? Oh, Lord, n6! There 
has been more money spent in the encouragement ot the Pada- 
reen mare there one season, than given in rewards to learned 
men since the time of Usher. All their productions in learning 
amount to perhaps a. translation, or a few tracts in divinity; 
and all their productions in wit to just nothing at all. Why 
the plague, then, so fond of Ireland? Then, all at once, be¬ 
cause you, my dear friend, and a few more who are exceptions 
to the general picture, have a residence there. This it is that 
gives me all the pangs I feel in separation. I confess I carry 
this spirit sometimes to the souring the pleasures I at present 
possess. Is I go to the opera, where Signora Columba pours 
out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for Lissoy fireside, 
and Johnny Armstrong’s ‘ Last Good-night ’ from Peggy Gol¬ 
den. If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where nature never ex¬ 
hibited a more magnificent prospect, I confess it fine; but then 
I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy gate, 
and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature. 

“ Before Charles came hither my thoughts sometimes found 
refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


65 


fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the ra ¬ 
pidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one to ob¬ 
jects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he 
tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still 
very poor. Nay, all the news I hear of you is, that you sally 
out in visits among the neighbors, and sometimes make a mi¬ 
gration from the blue bed to the brown. I could from my 
heart wish that you and she (Mrs. Hodson), and Lissoy and 
Ballyrnahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration 
into Middlesex; though, upon second thoughts, this might be 
attended with a few inconveniences. Therefore, as the moun¬ 
tain will not come to Mohammed, why Mohammed shall go to 
the mountain; or, to speak plain English, as you cannot con¬ 
veniently pay me a visit, if next summer I can contrive to be 
absent six weeks from London, I shall spend three of them 
among my friends in Ireland. But first, believe me, my de¬ 
sign is purely to visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy con¬ 
tributions ; neither to excite envy nor solicit favor; in fact, my 
circumstances are adapted to neither. I am too poor to be 
gazed at, and too rich to need assistance.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

HACKNEY AUTHORSHIP—THOUGHTS OF LITERARY SUICIDE—RE¬ 
TURN TO PECKHAM—ORIENTAL PROJECTS—LITERARY ENTER¬ 
PRISE TO RAISE FUNDS—LETTER TO EDWARD WELLS—TO 
ROBERT BRYANTON—DEATH OF UNCLE CONTARINE— LETTER TO 
COUSIN JANE. 

For some time Goldsmith continued to write miscellaneously 
for reviews and other periodical publications, but without mak¬ 
ing any decided hit, to use a technical term. Indeed, as yet ho 
appeared destitute of the strong excitement of literary ambi¬ 
tion, and wrote only on the spur of necessity and at the urgent 
importunity of his bookseller. His indolent and truant dispo¬ 
sition, ever averse from labor and delighting in holiday, had 
to be scourged up to its task; still it was this very truant dis¬ 
position which threw an unconscious charm over everything 
he wrote; bringing with it honeyed thoughts and pictured 
images which had sprung up in his mind in the sunny hours of 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


6 ° 

66 

idleness: these effusions, dashed off on compulsion in the ext 
^ency of the moment, were published anonymously; so that 
they made no collective impression on the public, and reflected 
no fame on the name of their author. 

In an essay published some time subsequently in the Bee , 
Goldsmith adverts, in his own humorous way, to his 
impatience ab the tardiness with which his desultory and 
unacknowledged essays crept into notice. 4 ‘ I was once 
induced,” says he, “ to show my indignation against the pub¬ 
lic by discontinuing my efforts to please, and was bravely 
resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manu¬ 
scripts in a passion. Upon reflection, however, I considered 
ivhat set or body of people would be displeased at my rashness. 
The sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next morning 
as bright as usual; men might laugh and sing the next day, 
and transact business as before; and not a single creature feel 
any regret but myself. Instead of having Apollo in mourn¬ 
ing or the Muses in a fit of the spleen; instead of having the 
learned world apostrophizing at my untimely decease; per¬ 
haps all Grub Street might laugh at my fate, and self-approv¬ 
ing dignity be unable to shield me from ridicule.” 

Circumstances occurred about this time to give a new direc¬ 
tion to Goldsmith’s hopes and schemes. Having resumed for 
a brief period the superintendence of the Peckham school 
during a fit of illness of Dr. Milner, that gentleman, in 
requital for his timely services, promised to use his influence 
with a friend, an East India director, to procure him a medical 
appointment in India. 

There was every reason to believe that the influence of Dr. 
Miln er would be effectual; but how was Goldsmith to find the 
ways and means of fitting himself out for a voyage to the 
Indies? In this emergency he was driven to a more extended 
exercise of the pen than he had yet attempted. His skirmish¬ 
ing among books as a reviewer, and his disputatious ramble 
among the schools and universities and literati of the Con¬ 
tinent, had filled his mind with facts and observations which 
he now set about digesting into a treatise of some magnitude, 
to be entitled, “ An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite 
Learning in Europe.” As the work grew on his hands his 
sanguine temper ran ahead of his labors. Feeling secure ol 
success in England, he was anxious to forestall the piracy of 
the Irish press; for as yet, the union not having taken place, 
the English law of copyright did not extend to the other side 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


67 


of the Irish Channel. He wrote, therefore, to his friends in 
Ireland, urging them, to circulate his proposals for his contem¬ 
plated work, and obtain subscriptions payable in advance-, 
the money to be transmitted to a Mr. Bradley, an eminent 
bookseller in Dublin, who would give a receipt for it and be 
accountable for the delivery of the books. The letters written 
by him on tliis occasion are worthy of copious citation as 
being full of character and interest. One was to his relative 
and college intimate, Edward Wells, who had studied for 
the bar, but was now living at ease on his estate on Ros¬ 
common. “You have quitted,” writes Goldsmith, “the plan 
of life which you once intended to pursue, and given up 
ambition for domestic tranquillity. I cannot avoid feeling 
some regret that one of my few friends has declined a pursuit 
in which he had every reason to expect success. I have often 
let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and have 
imagined you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar; 
while A have taken no small pride to myself, and whispered to 
all that I could come near, that this was my cousin. Instead 
of this, it seems, that you are merely contented to be a happy 
man; to be esteemed by youi^ acquaintances; to cultivate 
your paternal acres; to take unmolested a nap under one of 
your own hawthorns or in Mrs. Wells’s bedchamber, which 
even a poet must confess is rather the more comfortable place 
of the two. But, however your resolutions may be altered 
with regard to your situation in life, I persuade myself they 
are unalterable with respect to your friends in it. I cannot 
think the world has taken such entire possession of that heart 
(once so susceptible of friendship) as not to have left a comer 
there for a friend or two, but I flatter myself that even I have 
a place among the number. This I have a claim to from the 
similitude of our dispositions; or setting that aside, I can 
demand it as a right by the most equitable law of nature; I 
mean that of retaliation; for indeed you have more than your 
share in mine. I am a man of few professions; and yet at this 
very instant I cannot avoid the painful apprehension that my 
present professions (which speak not half my feelings) should 
be considered only as a pretext to cover a request, as I have a 
request to make. No, my dear Ned, I know you are too 
generous to think so, and you know me too proud to stoop to 
unnecessary insincerity—I have a request, it is true, to make, 
but as I know to whom I am a petitioner, I make it without 
liflidenco cr confusion. It is in short this, I am going to pub- 


68 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


lish a book in London,” etc. The residue of the leti3i specifies 
the nature of the request, which was merely to aid in circulat¬ 
ing his proposals and obtaining subscriptions. The letter of 
the poor author, however, was unattended to' and unac¬ 
knowledged by the prosperous Mr. Wells, of Roscommon, 
though in after years he was proud to claim relationship to Dr, 
Goldsmith, when he had risen to celebrity. 

Another' of Goldsmith’s letters was to Robert Bryanton, 
with whom he had long ceased to be in correspondence. “ 1 
believe,” writes lie, “ that they who are drunk, or out of their 
wits, fancy everybody else in the same condition. Mine is a 
friendship that neither distance nor time can efface, which is 
probably the reason that, for the soul of me, I can’t avoid 
thinking yours of the same cemplexion; and yet I have many 
reasons for being of a contrary opinion, else why, in so long 
an absence, was I never made a partner in your concerns? 
To hear of your success would have given me the utmost 
pleasure; and a communication of your very disappointments 
would divide the uneasiness I too frequently feel for my own. 
Indeed, my dear Bob, you don’t conceive how unkindly you 
have treated one whose circumstances afford him few pros¬ 
pects of pleasure, except those reflected from the happiness of 
his friends. However, since you have not let me hear from 
you, I have in some measure disappointed your neglect by 
frequently thinking of you. Every day or so I remember the 
calm anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the easy chair; 
recall the first adventures that first cemented our friendship; 
the school, the college, or the tavern; preside in fancy over 
your cards; and am displeased at your bad play when the 
rubber goes against you, though not with all that agony of 
soul as when I was once your partner. Is it not strange that 
two of such like affections should be so much separated, and 
so differently employed as we are? You seem placed at the 
centre of fortune’s wheel, and, let it revolve never so fast, are 
insensible of the motion. I seem to have been tied to the cir¬ 
cumference, and whirled disagreeably round,, as if on a whirli¬ 
gig.” 

He then runs into a whimsical and extravagant tirade about 
his future prospects, the wonderful career of fame and for¬ 
tune that awaits him; and after indulging in all kinds of humor¬ 
ous gasconades, concludes: “Let me, then, stop my fancy to 
take a view of my future self—and, as the boys say, light down 
to see myself on horseback. Well, now that l am down, where 


OLIVER u 


the d—1 is If Oh gods! gods! here m 

bread, and expecting to he dunned for a milk . 

He would, on this occasion have doubtless written xu 
uncle Contarine, but that generous friend was sunk into 
a helpless hopeless state from which death soon released 
him. 

Cut off thus from the kind co-operation of his uncle, he ad¬ 
dresses a letter to his cousin Jane, the companion of his 
school-boy and happy days, now the wife of Mr. Lawder. The 
object was to secure her interest with her husband in promoting 
the circulation of his proposals. The letter is full of character. 

“If you should ask,” he begins, “why, in an interval of so 
many years, you never heard from me, permit me, madam, to 
ask the same question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. 
{ wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain in 
Flanders, and Rouen in France, hut received no answer. To 
wlfat could I attribute this silence but to displeasure or forgetful¬ 
ness? Whether I was right in my conjecture I do not pretend 
to determine; but this I must ingenuously own, that I have a 
thousand times in my turn endeavored to forget them , whom I 
could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have attempted to 
blot their names from my memory, and, I confess it, spent whole 
days in efforts to tear their image from my heart. Could I have 
succeeded, you had not now been troubled with this renewal of 
a discontinued correspondence; but, as every effort the restless 
make to procure sleep serves but to keep them waking all my 
attempts contributed to impress what I would forget deeper on 
my imagination. But this subject I would willingly turn from, 
and yet, £ for the soul of me, ’ I can’t till I have said all. I was, 
madam, when I discontinued writing to Kilmore, in such cir¬ 
cumstances that all my endeavors to continue your regards 
might be attributed to wrong motives. My letters might be 
looked upon as the petitions of a beggar, and not the offerings 
of a friend; while all my professions, instead of being consid' 
ered as the result of disinterested esteem, might be ascribed t - 
venal insincerity. I believe, indeed, you had too much gener¬ 
osity to place them in such a light, but I could not bear even 
the shadow of such a suspicion. The most delicate friendships 
are always most sensible of the slightest invasion, and the 
strongest jealousy is ever attendant on the warmest regard. I 
could not—I own I could not—continue a correspondence in 
which every acknowledgment for past favors might be consid¬ 
ered as an indirect request for future ones; and where it might 




jart from a motive of gratitude alone, 
_^>ciOus of having bestowed it on much more dis* 
.dbied principles. It is true, this conduct might have been 
simple enough; but yourself must confess it was in character. 
Those who know me at all, know that I have always been actu¬ 
ated by different principles from the rest of mankind: and 
while none regarded the interest of his friend more, no man on 
earth regarded his own less. I have often affected bluntness to 
avoid the imputation of flattery; have frequently seemed to 
overlook those merits too obvious to escape notice, and pre¬ 
tended disregard to those instances of good nature and good 
sense, which I could not fail tacitly to applaud; and all this 
lest I should be ranked among the grinning tribe, who say 
‘ very true ’ to all that is said; who fill a vacant chair at a tea- 
table ; whose narrow souls never moved in a wider circle than 
the circumference of a guinea; and who had rather be reckon¬ 
ing the money in your pocket than the virtue in your breast. 
All this, I say, I have done, and a thousand other very silly, 
though very disinterested, things in my time, and for all which 
no soul cares a farthing about me. . . . Is it to be wondered 
that he should once in his life forget you, who has been all his 
life forgetting himself? However, it is probable you may one 
of these days see me turned into a perfect hunks, and as dark 
and intricate as a mouse-hole. I have already given my land¬ 
lady orders for an entire reform in the state of my finances. I 
declaim against hot suppers, drink less sugar in my tea, and 
check my grate with brickbats. Instead of hanging my room 
with pictures, I intend to adorn it with maxims of frugality. 
Those will make pretty furniture enough, and won’t be a bit 
too expensive; for I will draw them all out with my own hands, 
and my landlady’s daughter shall frame them with the parings 
of my black waistcoat. Each maxim is to be inscribed on a 
sheet of clean paper, and wrote with my best pen; of which the 
following will serve as a specimen. Look sharp: Mind the main 
chance: Money is money now: If you have a thousand pounds 
you can put your hands by your sides, and say you are worth a 
thousand pounds every day of the year: Take a farthing from 
a hundred and it will be a hundred no longer. Thus, which 
way soever I turn my eyes, they are sure to meet one of those 
friendly monitors; and as we are told of an actor who hung his 
room round with looking-glass to correct the defects of his per¬ 
son, my apartment shall be furnished in a peculiar manner, to 
correct the errors of my mind. Faith! madam, I heartily wish 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


71 


to be rich, if it were only for this reason, to say without a 
blush how much I esteem you. But, alas! I have many a 
fatigue to encounter before that happy time comes, when your 
poor old simple friend may again give a loose to the luxuriance 
of his nature; sitting by Kilmore fireside, recount the various 
adventures of a hard-fought life; laugh over the follies of f he 
day; join his flute to your harpsichord; and forget t 1 at ever 
he starved in those streets where Butler and Otway starved be¬ 
fore him. And now I mention those great names—my uncle l 
he is no more that soul of fire as when I once knew him. New¬ 
ton and Swift grew dim with age as well as he. But what shall 
\ say? His mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder 
tie feeble mansion of its abode: for the richest jewels soonest 
tfear their settings. Yet who but the fool would lament his 
condition! He now forgets the calamities of life. Perhaps in¬ 
dulgent Heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity 
here, which he so well deserves hereafter. But I must come to 
business; for business, as one of my maxims tells me, must be 
minded or lost. I am going to publish in London a book en¬ 
titled ‘ The Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe.’ 
The booksellers in Ireland republish every performance there 
without making the author any consideration. I would, in 
this respect, disappoint their avarice and have all the profits oi 
my labor to myself. I must therefore request Mr. Lawder to 
circulate among his friends and acquaintances a hundred of my 
proposals which I have given the bookseller, Mr. Bradley, iB 
Dame Street, directions to send to him. If, in pursuance oi 
such circulation, he should receive any subscriptions, I entreat, 
when collected, they may be sent to Mr. Bradley, as aforesaid, 
who will give a receipt, and be accountable for the work, or a 
return of the subscription. If this request (which, if it be com¬ 
plied with, will in some measure be an encouragement to a man 
of learning) should be disagreeable or troublesome, I would not 
press it; for I would be the last man on earth to have my 
labors go a-begging; but if I know Mr. Lawder (and sure I 
ought to know him), he will accept the employment with pleas¬ 
ure. All I can say—if he writes a book, I will get him two 
hundred subscribers, and those of the best wits in Europe. 
Whether this request is complied with or not, I shall not be 
uneasy; but there is one petition I must make to him and to 
you, which I solicit with the warmest ardor, and in which I 
cannot bear a refusal. I mean, dear madam, that I may be 
allowed to subscribe myself, your ever affectionate and obliged 


72 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


kinsman, Oliver Goldsmith. Now see how I blot and blun« 
der, when I am asking a favor.” 


CHAPTER X. 

ORIENTAL APPOINTMENT—AND DISAPPOINTMENT—EXAMINATION 
AT THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS—HOW TO PROCURE A SUIT OF 
CLOTHES—FRESH DISAPPOINTMENT—A TALE OF DISTRESS—THE 
SUIT OF CLOTHES IN PAWN—PUNISHMENT FOR DOING AN ACT 
OF CHARITY—GAYETIES OF GREEN ARBOR COURT—LETTER TO 
HIS BROTHER—LIRE OF VOLTAIRE—SCROGGIN, AN ATTEMPT AT 
MOCK-HEROIC POETRY. 

While Goldsmith was yet laboring at his treatise, the pro¬ 
mise made him by Dr. Milner was carried into effect, and he 
was actually appointed physician and surgeon to one of the 
factories on the coast of Coromandel. His imagination was 
immediately on fire with visions of Oriental wealth and mag¬ 
nificence. It is true the salary did not exceed one hundred 
pounds, but then, as appointed physician, he would have the 
exclusive practice of the place, amounting to one thousand 
pounds per annum; with advantages to be derived from trade, 
and from the high interest of money—twenty per cent; in a 
word, for once in his life, the road to fortune lay broad and 
straight before him. 

Hitherto, in his correspondence with his friends, he had said 
nothing of his India scheme; but now he imparted to them his 
brilliant prospects, urging the importance of their circulating 
his proposals and obtaining him subscriptions and advances on 
his forthcoming work, to furnish funds for his outfit. 

In the mean time he had to task that poor drudge, his muse, 
for present exigencies. Ten pounds were demanded for his 
appointment-warrant. Other expenses pressed hard upon 
him. Fortunately, though as yet unknown to fame, his 
Jiterary capability was known to “the trade,” and the coinage 
of his brain passed current in Grub Street. Archibald Hamil¬ 
ton, proprietor of the Critical Review, the rival to that of Grif¬ 
fiths, readily made him a small advance on receiving three 
articles for his periodical. His purse thus slenderly replen¬ 
ished, Goldsmith paid for his warrant; wiped off the score of 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


73 


his. milkmaid; abandoned liis garret, and moved into a shabby 
first floor in a forlorn court near the Old Bailey; there to await 
the time for his migration to the magnificent coast of Coro¬ 
mandel. 

Alas! poor Goldsmith! ever doomed to disappointment. 
Early in the gloomy month of November, that month of fog 
and despondency in London, he learned the shipwreck of Ms 
hope. The great Coromandel enterprise fell through; or rather 
the post promised to him was transferred to some other candi 
date. The cause of this disappointment it is now impossible to 
ascertain. The death of liis quasi patron. Dr. Milner, which 
happened about this time, may have had some effect in pro¬ 
ducing it; or there may have been some heedlessness and 
blundering on his own part; or some obstacle arising from 
his insuperable indigence; whatever may have been th8 
cause, he never mentioned it, which gives some ground to 
surmise that he himself was to blame. v^Jis friends learned 
with surprise that he had suddenly relinquished his appoint¬ 
ment to India about which he had raised such sanguine expec¬ 
tations; some accused him of fickleness and caprice; others 
supposed him unwilling to tear himself from the growing fasci¬ 
nations of the literary society of London. 

In the mean time, cut down in his hopes, and humiliated in 
Ms pride by the failure of his Coromandel scheme, he sought, 
without consulting his friends, to be examined at the College of 
Physicians for the humble situation of hospital mate. Even 
here poverty stood in his way. It was necessary to appear in 
a decent garb before the examining committee; but how was 
he to do so? He was literally out at elbows as well as out of 
cash. Here again the muse, so often jilted and neglected by 
him, came to his aid. In consideration of four articles fur¬ 
nished to the Monthly Review , Griffiths, his old taskmaster, 
was to become his security to the tailor for a suit of clothes. 
Goldsmith said he wanted them but for a single occasion, on 
which depended his appointment to a situation in the army; as 
soon as that temporary purpose was served they would either 
be returned or paid for. The books to be reviewed were ac¬ 
cordingly lent to him; the muse was again set to her compul¬ 
sory drudgery; the articles were scribbled off and sent to the 
bookseller, and the clothes came in due time from the tailor. 

From the records of the College of Surgeons, it appears that 
Goldsmith underwent his examination at Surgeons’ Hall on the 
21st of December, 1758. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


74 

Either from a confusion of mind incident to sensitive and 
imaginative persons on such occasions, or from a real want of 
surgical science, which last is extremely probable, he failed in 
his examination, and was rejected as unqualified. The effect 
of such a rejection was to disqualify him for every branch of 
public service, though he might have claimed a re-examina- 
ticn, after the interval of a few months devoted to further 
study. Such a re-examination he never attempted, nor did he 
ever communicate his discomfiture to any of his friends. 

On Christmas day, but four days after his rejection by the 
College of Surgeons, while he was suffering under the mortifi¬ 
cation of defeat and disappointment, and hard pressed for 
means of subsistence, he was surprised by the entrance into his 
room of the poor woman of whom he hired his wretched apart¬ 
ment, and to whom he owed some small arrears of rent. . She 
had a piteous tale of distress, and was clamorous in her afflic¬ 
tions. Her husbaiAJiad been arrested in the night for debt, 
and thrown into prison. This was too much for the quick 
feelings of Goldsmith; he was ready at any time to help the 
distressed, but in this instance he was himself in some measure 
a cause of the distress. What was to be done? He had nc 
money, it is true; but there hung the new suit of clothes in 
which he had stood his unlucky examination at Surgeons’ 
Hall. Without giving himself time for reflection, he sent it off 
to the pawnbroker’s, and raised thereon a sufficient sum to pay 
off his own debt, and to release his landlord from prison. 

Under the same pressure of penury and despondency, he 
borrowed from a neighbor a pittance to relieve his immediate 
wants, leaving as a security the books which he had recently 
reviewed. In the midst of these straits and harassments, he re¬ 
ceived a letter from Griffiths demanding in peremptory terms 
the return of the clothes and books, or immediate payment for 
the same. It appears that he had discovered the identical suit 
at the pawnbroker’s. The reply of Goldsmith is not known; 
it was out of his power to furnish either the clothes or the 
money; but he probably offered once more to make the muse 
stand his bail. His reply only increased the ire of the wealthy 
man of trade, and drew from him another letter still more 
harsh than the first, using the epithets of knave and sharper, 
and containing threats of prosecution and a prison. 

The following letter from poor Goldsmith gives the most touch¬ 
ing picture of an inconsiderate but sensitive man, harassed by 
care, stung by humiliations, and driven almost to desnondency. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


75 


“ Sir: I know of no misery but a jail to which my own im¬ 
prudences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it inevi¬ 
table these three or four weeks, and, by heavens! request it as 
a favor—as a favor that may prevent something more fatal. I 
have been some years struggling with a wretched being—with 
all that contempt that indigence brings with it—with all those 
passions which make contempt insupportable. What, then, 
has a jail that is formidable? I shall at least have the society 
of wretches, and such is to me true society. I tell you, again 
and again, that I am neither able nor willing to pay you a 
farthing, but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the 
tailor shall make; thus far, at least, I do not act the sharper, 
since, unable to pay my own debts one way, I would generally 
give some security another. No, sir; had I been a sharper— 
had I been possessed of less good-nature and native generosity, 
I might surely now have been in better circumstances. 

“I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which poverty unavoid¬ 
ably brings with it; my reflections are filled with repentance 
for my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a vil¬ 
lain ; that may be a character you unjustly charge me with. 
Your books, I can assure you, are neither pawned nor sold 
but in the custody of a friend, from whom my necessities 
obliged me to borrow some money; whatever becomes of mj 
person, you shall have them in a month. It is very possible 
both the reports you have heard and your own suggestions 
may have brought you false information with respect to mji 
character; it is very possible that the man whom you now 
regard with detestation may inwardly burn with grateful re¬ 
sentment. It is very possible that, upon a second perusal of 
the letter I sent you, you may see the workings of a mind 
strongly agitated with gratitude and jealousy. If such cir¬ 
cumstances should appear, at least spare invective till my book 
with Mr. Dodsley shall be published, and then, perhaps, you 
may see the bright side of a mind, when my professions shall 
not appear the dictates of necessity, but of choice. 

“You seem to think Dr. Milner knew me not. Perhaps so; 
but he was a man I shall ever honor; but I have friendships 
only with the dead! I ask pardon for taking up so much time; 
nor shall I add to it by any other professions than that I am, 
sir, your humble servant 

“ Oliver Goldmith. 

“ P.S.— I shall expect impatiently the result of your resolu¬ 
tions.” 


76 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


The dispute between the poet and the publisher was after* 
ward imperfectly adjusted, and it would appear that the 
clothes were paid for by a short compilation advertised by 
Griffiths in the course of the following month; hut the parties 
were never really friends afterwards, and the writings of Gold 
smith were harshly and unjustly treated in the Monthly Re 
view. 

We have given the preceding anecdote in detail, as furnish¬ 
ing one of the many instances in which Goldsmith’s prompt 
and benevolent impulses outran all prudent forecast, and in¬ 
volved him in difficulties and disgraces, which a more selfish 
man would have avoided. The pawning of the clothes, charged 
upon him as a crime by the grinding bookseller, and apparently 
admitted by him as one of “the meannesses which poverty 
unavoidably brings with it,” resulted, as we have shown, from 
a tenderness of heart and generosity of hand in which another 
man would have gloried; but these were such natural elements 
with him, that he was unconscious of their merit. It is a pity 
that wealth does not oftener bring such “meannesses” in its 
train. 

And now let us be indulged in a few particulars about these 
lodgings in which Goldsmith was guilty of this thoughtless act 
of benevolence. They were in a very shabby house, No. 11 
Green Arbor Court, between the Old Bailey and Fleet Market 
An old woman was still living in 1820 who was a relative of thf 
identical landlady whom Goldsmith relieved by the money re 
ceived from the pawnbroker. She was a child about sever 
years of age at the time that the poet rented his apartment of 
her relative, and used frequently to be at the house in Green 
Arbor Court. She was drawn there, in a great measure, by 
the gnod-humored kindness of Goldsmith, who was always ex¬ 
ceedingly fond of the society of children. He used to assemble 
those of the family in his room, give them cakes and sweet¬ 
meats, and set them dancing to the sound of his flute. He was 
very friendly to those around him, and cultivated a kind of 
intimacy with a watchmaker in the Court, who possessed 
much native wit and humor. He passed most of the day, 
however, in his room, and only went out in the evenings. His 
days were no doubt devoted to the drudgery of the pen, and 
it would appear that he occasionally found the booksellers 
urgent taskmasters. On one occasion a visitor was shown up 
to his room, and immediately their voices were heard in high 
altercation, and the key was turned within the lock. The 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 77 

landlady, at first, was disposed to go to the assistance of her 
lodger; but a calm succeeding, she forbore to interfere. 

Late in the evening the door was unlocked; a supper ordered 
by the visitor from a neighboring tavern, and Goldsmith and 
his intrusive guest finished the evening in great good-humor. 
It was probably his old taskmaster Griffiths, whose press 
might have been waiting, and who found no other mode of 
getting a stipulated task from Goldsmith than by locking him 
in, and staying by him until it was finished. 

But we have a more particular account of these lodgings in 
Green Arbor Court from the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterward 
Bishop of Dromore, and celebrated for his relics of ancient 
poetry, his beautiful ballads, and other works. During an 
occasional visit to London, he was introduced to Goldsmith by 
Grainger, and ever after continued one of his most steadfast 
and valued friends. The following is his description of the 
poet’s squalid apartment: “I called on Goldsmith at his lodg¬ 
ings in March, 1759, and found him writing his ‘ Inquiry ’ in a 
miserable dirty-looking room, in which there was but one 
chair; and when, from civility, he resigned it to me, he him¬ 
self was obliged to sit in the window. While we were con¬ 
versing together some one tapped gently at the door, and being 
desired to come in, a poor, ragged little girl, of a very be¬ 
coming demeanor, entered the room, and dropping a courte¬ 
sy, said, ‘ My mamma sends her compliments and begs the 
favor of you to lend her a chamber-pot full of coals.’ ” 

We are reminded in this anecdote of Goldsmith’s picture of 
the lodgings of Beau Tibbs, and of the peep into the secrets of a 
makeshift establishment given to a visitor by the blundering 
old Scotch woman. 

‘ ‘ By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would 
permit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously 
pleased to call the first floor down the chimney; and, knocking 
at the door, a voice from within demanded ‘ Who’s there?’ 
My conductor answered that it was him. But this not satisfy¬ 
ing the querist, the voice again repeated the demand, to which 
he answered louder than before; and now the door was opened 
by an old woman with cautious reluctance. 

“ When we got in he welcomed me to his house with great 
ceremony; and, turning to the old woman, asked where was 
her lady. ‘ Good troth, ’ replied she, in a peculiar dialect, 
‘ she’s washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they 
have taken an oath against lending the tub any longer.’ 4 My 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


78 

two shirts,’ cried he, in a tone that faltered with confusion; 
< w h a t does the idiot mean? ’ ‘ I ken what I mean weel enough, 
replied the other; ‘ she’s washing your twa shirts at the next 
door, because—’ ‘ Fire and fury! no more of thy stupid ex¬ 
planations, ’ cried he; ‘go and inform her we have company. 
Were that Scotch hag to be for ever in my family, she would 
never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent 
of hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high 
life; and yet it is very surprising too, as I had her from a Par¬ 
liament man, a friend of mine from the Highlands, one of the 
politest men in the world; but that’s a secret.’” * 

Let us linger a little in Green Arbor Court, a place conse¬ 
crated by the genius and the poverty of Goldsmith, but re¬ 
cently obliterated in the course of modern improvements. The 
writer of this memoir visited it not many years since on a 
literary pilgrimage, and may be excused for repeating a de¬ 
scription of it which he has heretofore inserted in another 
publication. “It then existed in its pristine state, and was a 
small square of tall and miserable houses, the very intestines 
of which seemed turned inside out, to judge from the old gar¬ 
ments and frippery that fluttered from every window. It ap¬ 
peared to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched 
about the little square, on which clothes were dangling to dry. 

“Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between 
two viragoes about a disputed right to a washtub, and im¬ 
mediately the whole community was in a hubbub. Heads in 
mob-caps popped out of every window, and such a clamor of 
tongues ensued that I was fain to stop my ears. Every amazon 
took part with one or other of the disputants, and brandished 
her arms, dripping with soapsuds, and fired away from her 
window as from the embrasure of a fortress; while the screams 
of children nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of 
this hive, waking with the noise, set up their shrill pipes to 
swell the general concert. ”f 

While in these forlorn quarters, suffering under extreme de¬ 
pression of spirits, caused by his failure at Surgeons’ Hall, tho 
disappointment of his hopes, and his harsh collisions with 
Griffiths; Goldsmith wrote the following letter to his brother 
Henry, some parts of which are most touchingly mournful. 


* Citizen of the World- Letter iv. 
t Tales of a Traveller, 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


79 


“Dear Sir*. Your punctuality in answering a man whose 
trade is writing, is more than I had reason to expect; and yet 
you see me generally till a whole sheet, which is all the re¬ 
compense I can make for being so frequently troublesome. 
The behavior of Mr. Wells and Mr. Lawder is a little extraor¬ 
dinary. However, their answering neither you nor me is a 
sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I 
assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had 
expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall, the 
beginning of next month, send over two himdred and fifty 
books,* which are all that I fancy can be well sold among you, 
and I would have you make some distinction in the persons 
who have subscribed. The money, which will amount to sixty 
pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley as soon as possible. I 
am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion for it. 

“I have met with no disappointment with respect to my 
East India voyage, nor are my resolutions altered; though, at 
the same time, I must confess, it gives me some pain to think 
I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. 
Though I never had a day’s sickness since I saw you, yet I am 
not that strong, active man you once knew me. You scarcely 
can conceive- how much eight years of disappointment, an¬ 
guish, and study have worn me down. If I remember right 
you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare 
venture to say, that, if a stranger saw us both, he would pay 
me the honors of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale, 
melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eye¬ 
brows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and 
you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On 
the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, 
passing many a happy day among your own children or those 
who knew you a child. 

“Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I 
have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of 
cool, designing beinys, and have contracted all their suspicious 
manner in my own behavior. I should actually be as unfit for 
the society of my friends at home, as I detest that which I am 
obliged to partake of here. I can now neither partake of the 
pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can 
neither laugh nor drink; have contracted a hesitating, dis- 


* The Inquiry into Polite Literature. Ilis previous remarks apply to the sub* 
scription. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


80 

agreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill- 
nature itself; in short, I have thought myself into a settled 
melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. 
Whence this romantic turn that all our family are possessed 
with? Whence this love for every place and every country 
but that in which we reside—for every occupation but our 
own? this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dissipate? 
I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging 
this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regardless 
of yours. 

“The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son a 
scholar are judicious and convincing; I should, however, be 
glad to know for what particular profession he is designed If 
le be assiduous and divested of strong passions (for passions 
m youth always lead to pleasure), he may do very well in your 
college; for it must be owned that the industrious poor have 
good encouragement there, perhaps better than in any other 
in Europe. But if he has ambition, strong passions, and an 
exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send him there, unless 
you have no other trade for him but your own. It is impossi¬ 
ble to conceive how much may be done by proper education at 
home. A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well 
Latin, French, arithmetic, and the principles of the civil law, 
and can write a fine hand, has an education that may qualify 
him for an.y undertaking; and these parts of learning should 
be carefully inculcated, let him be designed for whatever call¬ 
ing he will. 

“ Above sill things, let him never touch a romance or novel; 
these paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and 
describe happiness that man never tastes. ITow delusive, how 
destructive, are those pictures of consummate bliss! They 
teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness 
that never existed; to despise the little good which fortune has 
mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave; and, 
in general, take the word of a man who has seen the world, 
and who has studied human nature more by experience than 
precept; take my word for it, I say, that books teach us very 
little of the world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty 
would only serve to make the possessor ridiculous—may dis¬ 
tress, but cannot relieve him. Frugality, and even avarice, in 
the lower orders of mankind, are true ambition. These afford 
the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. Teach 
then, my dear sir, to your son, thrift and economy. Let bis 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


81 


poor wandering uncle’s example be placed before his eyes. I 
had learned from books to be disinterested and generous, 
before I was taught from experience the necessity of being 
prudent. I had contracted the habits and notions of a phi¬ 
losopher, while I was exposing myself to the approaches of 
insidious cunning; and often by being, even with my narrow 
finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and 
placed myself in the very situation of the wretch who thanked 
me for my bounty. When I am in the remotest part of the 
world, tell him this, and perhaps he may improve from my 
example. But I find myself again falling into my gloomy 
habits of thinking. 

“My mother, I am informed, is almost blind; even though I 
iiad the utmost inclination to return home, under such circum¬ 
stances I could not, for to behold her in distress without a 
capacity of relieving her from it, would add much to my 
splenetic habit. Your last letter was much too short; it 
should have answered some queries I had made in my former. 
Just sit down as I do, and write forward until you have filled 
all your paper. It requires no thought, at least from the ease 
with which my own sentiments rise when they are addressed 
to you. For, believe me, my head has no share in all I write; 
my heart dictates the whole. Pray give my love to Bob Bry- 
anton, and entreat him from me not to drink. My dear sir, 
give me some account about poor Jenny.* Yet her husband 
loves her; if so, she cannot be unhappy. 

“I know not whether I should tell you-yet why should I 
conceal these trifles, or, indeed, anything from you? There is 
a book of mine will be published in a few days: the life of a 
very extraordinary man; no less than the great Voltaire. 
You know already by the title that it is no more than a 
catch-penny. However, I spent but four weeks on the whole 
performance, for which I received twenty pounds. When 
published, I shall take some method of conveying it to you, 
unless you may think it dear of the postage, which may 
amount to four or five shillings. However, I fear you will not 
find an equivalent of amusement. 

“Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should 
have given me your opinion of the design of the heroi-comical 
poem which I sent you. You remember I intended to intro- 


* His sister, Mrs. Johnston; her marriage, like that of Mrs. Hodson, was private, 
but in pecuniary matters much less fortunate. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


82 

duce the hero of the poem as lying in a paltry alehouse. You 
may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flat¬ 
ter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies may 
be described somewhat in this way: 

“ ‘ The window, patched with paper, lent a ray 
That feebly show’d the state in which he lay; 

The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread, 

The humid wall with paltry pictures spread; 

The game of goose was there exposed to view, 

And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew; 

The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place, 

And Prussia’s monarch show’d his lamp black face. 

The morn was cold: he views with keen desire 
A rusty grate unconscious of a fire; 

An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored, 

And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.’ 

“And now imagine, after his soliloquy, the landlord to make 
his appearance in order to dun him for the reckoning: 

“ 1 Not with that face, so servile and so gay. 

That welcomes every stranger that can pay: 

Witn sulky eye he smoked the patient man, 

Then,puird his breeches tight, and thus began,’ etc.* 

“All this is taken, you sec, from nature. It is a good 
remark of Montaigne’s, that the wisest men often have friends 
with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. 
Take my present follies as instances of my regard. Poetry is 
a much easier and more agreeable species of composition than 
prose; and could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant 
employment to be a poet. I am resolved to leave no space, 
though I should fill it up only by telling you, what you very 
well know already, I mean that I am your most affectionate 
friend and brother, 

“Oliver Goldsmith.” 

The Life of Voltaire, alluded to in the latter part of the 
preceding letter, was the literary job undertaken to satisfy the 
demands of Griffiths. It was to have preceded a translation 
of the Henriade, by Ned Pur don, Goldsmith’s old schoolmate, 
now a Grub Street writer, who starved rather than lived by 
the exercise of his pen, and often tasked Goldsmith’s scanty 
means to relieve his hunger. His miserable career was 
summed up by our poet in the following lines written some 


* The projected poem, of which the above were specimens, appears never to 
h.ave been completed. 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. S3 

years after the time we are treating of, on hearing that ho hail 
suddenly dropped dead in Smithfield: 

“ Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, 

Who long was a bookseller’s hack; 

He led such a damnable life in this world, 

I don’t think he’ll wish to come back.” 

The memoir and translation, though advertised to form a 
volume, were not published together; but appeared separately 
in a magazine. 

As to the heroi-comical poem, also, cited in the foregoing 
letter, it appears to have perished in embryo. Had it been 
brought to maturity we should have had further traits of 
autobiography; the room already described was probably his 
own squalid quarters in Green Arbor Court; and in a subse¬ 
quent morsel of the poem we have the poet himself, under the 
euphonious name of Scroggin: 

“ Where the Red Lion peering o’er the way, 

Invites each passing 'stranger that can pay; 

Where Calvert’s butt and Parson’s black champaigne 
Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane: 

There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug. 

The muse found Scroggin stretch’d beneath a rug; 

A nightcap deck’d his brows instead of bay, 

A cap by night, a stocking all the day!” 

It is to be regretted that this poetical conception was not 
carried out; like the author’s other writings, it might have 
abounded with pictures of life and touches of nature drawn 
from his own observation and experience, and mellowed by 
his own humane and tolerant spirit; and might have been a 
worthy companion or rather contrast to his ‘ ‘ Traveller” and 
“Deserted Village,” and have remained in the language a 
first-rate specimen of the mock-heroic. 


CHAPTER XI. 

PUBLICATION OF “THE INQUIRY”—ATTACKED BY GRIFFITHS’ RE* 
VIEW—KENRICK THE LITERARY ISHMAELITE— PERIODICAL LIT¬ 
ERATURE— GOLDSMITH’S ESSAYS—GARRICK AS A MANAGER— 
SMOLLETT AND HIS SCHEMES — CHANGE OF LODGINGS—THE 
ROBIN HOOD CLUB. 

Toward the end of March, 1759, the treatise on which Gold 
smith had laid so much stress, on which he at one time had 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


84 

calculated to defray the expenses of his outfit to India, and to 
which he had adverted in his correspondence with Griffiths, 
made its appearance. It was published by the Dodslcys, and 
entitled “An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning 
in Europe.” 

In the present day, when the whole field of contemporary 
literature is so widely surveyed and amply discussed, and 
when the current productions of every country arc constantly 
collated and ably criticised, a treatise like that of Goldsmith 
would be considered as extremely limited and unsatisfactory; 
but at that time it possessed novelty in its views and wideness 
in its scope, and being indued with the peculiar charm of style 
inseparable from the author, it commanded public attention 
and a profitable sale. As it was the most important pro¬ 
duction that had yet come from Goldsmith’s pen, he was 
anxious to have the credit of it; yet it appeared without his 
name on the title-page. The authorship, however, was well 
known throughout the world of letters, and the author had 
now grown into sufficient literary importance to become an 
object of hostility to the underlings of the press. One of ti>e 
most virulent attacks upon him was in a criticism on this 
treatise, and appeared in the Monthly Review, to which he 
himself had been recently a contributor. It slandered him as 
a man while it decried him as an author, and accused him, 
by innuendo, of “laboring under the infamy of having, by the 
vilest and meanest actions, forfeited all pretensions to honoi 
and honesty,” and of practising “those acts which bring the 
sharper to the cart’s tail or the pillory.” 

It will be remembered that the Review was owned by 
Griffiths the bookseller, with whom Goldsmith had recently 
had a misunderstanding. The criticism, therefore, was no 
doubt dictated by the fingerings of resentment; and the impu¬ 
tations upon Goldsmith’s character for honor and honesty, 
and the vile and mean actions hinted at, could only allude to 
the unfortunate pawning of the. clothes. All this, too, was 
after Griffiths had received the affecting letter from Gold¬ 
smith, drawing a picture of his poverty and perplexities, and 
after the latter had made him a literary compensation. 
Griffiths, in fact, was sensible of the falsehood and extrava¬ 
gance of the attack, and tried to exonerate himself by 
declaring that the criticism was written by a person in his 
employ; but we see no difference in atrocity between him who 
wields the knife and him who hires the cut-throat. It may be 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


S5 


well, however, in passing, to bestow our mite-of notoriety 
upon the miscreant who launched the slander. He deserves 
it for a long course of dastardly and venomous attacks, not 
merely upon Goldsmith, but upon most of the successful 
authors of the day. His name was Kenrick. He was origi¬ 
nally a mechanic, but, possessing some degree of talent and 
industry, applied himself to literature as a profession. This 
he pursued for many years, and tried his hand in every 
department of prose and poetry; he wrote plays and satires, 
philosophical tracts, critical dissertations, and works on phi¬ 
lology ; nothing from his pen ever rose to first-rate excellence, 
or gained him a popular name, though he received from some 
university the degree of Doctor of Laws. Dr. Johnson 
characterized his literary career in one short sentence. “Sir, 
he is one of the many who have made themselves public with¬ 
out making themselves known” 

Soured by his owr want of success, jealous of the success of 
others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits 
of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the 
practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of 
the press. In this his malignant bitterness soon gave him 
a notoriety which his talents had never been able to attain. 
We shall dismiss him for the present with the following sketch 
of him by the hand of one of his contemporaries: 

“ Dreaming of genius which he never had, 

Halfwit, half fool, half critic, and half mad; 

Seizing, like Shirley, on the poet's lyre, 

With all his rage, but not one spark of fire; 

Eager for slaughter, and resolved to tear 

From others’ brows that wreath he must not wear— 

Next Kenrick came: all furious and replete 
With brandy, malice, pertness, and conceit; 

Unskill’d in classic lore, through envy blind 
To all that’s beauteous, learned, or refined; 

For faults alone behold the savage prowl. 

With reason’s offal glut his ravening soul; 

Pleased with his prey, its inmost blood he drinks, 

And mumbles, paws, and turns it—till it stinks.” 

The British press about this time was extravagantly fruitful" 
of periodical publications. That “oldest inhabitant,” the Gen¬ 
tleman's Magazine , almost coeval with St. John’s gate which 
graced its title-page, had long been elbowed by magazines and 
reviews of all kinds; Johnson’s Rambler had introduced the 
fashion of periodical essays, which he had followed up in his 
Adventurer and Idler. Imitations had sprung up on every 


86 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


side, under every variety of name; until British literature was 
entirely overrun by a weedy and transient efflorescence. Many 
of these rival periodicals choked each other almost at the out¬ 
set, and few of them have escaped oblivion. 

Goldsmith wrote for some of the most successful, such as 
the Bee, the Busy-Body , and the Lady's Magazine. His es¬ 
says, though characterized by his delightful style, his pure, 
benevolent morality, and his mellow, unobtrusive humor, did 
not produce equal effect at first with more garish writings of 
infinitely less value; they did not “strike,” as it is termed; 
but they had that rare and enduring merit which rises in esti¬ 
mation on every perusal. They gradually stole upon the 
heart of the public, were copied into numerous contemporary 
publications, and now they are garnered up among the choice 
productions of British literature. 

In his Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, Goldsmith 
had given offence to David Garrick, at that time the autocrat 
of the Drama, and was doomed to experience its effect. A 
clamor had been raised against Garrick for exercising a des¬ 
potism over the stage, and bringing forward nothing but old 
plays to the exclusion of original productions. Walpole joined 
in this charge. “Garrick,” said he, “is treating the town as 
it deserves and likes to be treated; with scenes, fireworks, and 
his own writings. A good new play I never expect to see 
more; nor have seen since the Provoked Husband, which 
came out when I was at school.” Goldsmith, who was ex¬ 
tremely fond of the theatre, and felt the evils of this system, 
inveighed in his treatise against the wrongs experienced 
by authors at the hands of managers. “Our poet’s perform¬ 
ance,” said he, “must undergo a process truly chemical before 
it is presented to the public. It must be tried in the manager’s 
fire; strained through a licenser, suffer from repeated correc ¬ 
tions, till it may be a mere caput mortuum when it arrives 
before the public.” Again. “ Getting a play on even in three 
or four years is a privilege reserved only for the happy few 
who have the arts of courting the manager as well as the muse; 
who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to 
support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. 
Our Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. 
I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters 
then; but the man who under present discouragements ven¬ 
tures to write for the stage, whatever claim he may have to 
the appellation of a wit. at least has no right to be called a 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


87 

conjurer.” But a passage perhaps which touched more sensi¬ 
bly than all the rest on the sensibilities of Garrick, was the 
following. 

“ I have no particular spleen against the fellow who sweeps 
the stage with the besom, or the hero who brushes it with his 
train. It were a matter of indifference to me whether our 
heroines are in keeping, or our candle-snuffers burn their 
fingers, did not such make a great part of public care and 
polite conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the 
stage which they do on it; and, to use an expression borrowed 
from the green-room, every one is up in his part. I am sorry 
to say it, they seem to forget their real characters.” 

These strictures were considered by Garrick as intended for 
himself, and they were rankling in his mind when Goldsmith 
waited upon him and solicited his vote for the vacant secre¬ 
taryship of the Society of Aids, of which the manager was a 
member. Garrick, puffed up by Ms* dramatic renown and his 
intimacy with the great, and knowing Goldsmith only by his 
budding reputation, may not have considered him of sufficient 
importance to be conciliated. In reply to his solicitations, he 
observed that he could hardly expect his friendly exertions 
after the unprovoked attack he had made upon his manage¬ 
ment. Goldsmith replied that he had indulged in no person¬ 
alities, and had only spoken what he believed to be the truth. 
He made no further apology nor application; failed to get the 
appointment, and considered Garrick his enemy. In the 
second edition of his treatise he expunged or modified the 
passages which had given the manager offence; but though 
the author and actor became intimate in after years, this false 
step at the outset o£ their intercourse was never forgotten. 

About this time Goldsmith engaged with Dr. Smollett, who 
was about to launch the British Magazine. Smollett was a 
complete schemer and speculator in literature, and intent upon 
enterprises that had money rather than reputation in view. 
Goldsmith has a good-humored hit at this propensity in one 
of his papers in the Bee , in which he represents Johnson, 
Hume, and others taking seats in the stage-coach bound for 
Fame, while Smollett prefers that destined for Riches. 

Another prominent employer of Goldsmith was Mr. John 
Newbery, who engaged him to contribute occasional essays to 
a newspaper entitled the Public Ledger , which made its first 
appearance on the 12th of January, 1760. His most valuable 
Md characteristic contributions to this paper were his Chinese 


88 


OLIVER GOLD SMITH 


Letters, subsequently modified into the Citizen of the World. 
These lucubrations attracted general attention; they were re* 
printed in the various periodical publications of the day, and 
met with great applause. The name of the author, however, 
was as yet but little known. 

Being now in easier circumstances, and in the receipt of fre¬ 
quent sums from the booksellers, Goldsmith, about the middle 
of 1760, emerged from his dismal abode in Green Arbor Court, 
and took respectable apartments in Wine-Office Court, Fleet 
Street. 

Still he continued to look back with considerate benevolence 
to the poor hostess, whose necessities he had relieved by pawn¬ 
ing his gala coat, for we are told that ‘ ‘ he often supplied her 
with food from his own table, and visited her frequently with 
fhe sole purpose to be kind to her. ” 

He now became a member of a debating club, called the 
Robin Hood, which used to meet near Temple Bar, and in 
which Burke, while yet a Temple student, had first tried his 
powers. Goldsmith spoke here* occasionally, and is recorded 
in the Robin Hood archives as “a candid disputant, with a 
clear head and an honest heart, though coming but seldom to 
the society.” His relish was for clubs of a more social, jovial 
nature, and he was never fond of argument. An amusing 
anecdote is told of his first introduction to the club, by Samuel 
Derrick, an Irish acquaintance of some humor. On entering, 
Goldsmith was struck with the self-important appearance of 
the chairman ensconced in a large gilt chair. “ This,” said he, 
“must be the Lord Chancellor at least.” “No, no,” replied 
Derrick, “he’s only master of the rolls .”—The chairman was a 
baker . 


CHAPTER Nil. 

NEW LODGINGS—VISITS OP CEREMONY—HANGERS-ON—PILKING* 
TON AND THE WHITE MOUSE—INTRODUCTION TO DR. JOHNSON 
— DAVIES AND HIS BOOKSHOP—PRETTY MRS. DAVIES—FOOTE 
AND HIS PROJECTS—CRITICISM OF THE CUDGEL- 

In his new lodgings in Wine-Office Court, Goldsmith began 
to receive visits of ceremony, and to entertain his literary 
friends. Among the latter he now numbered several names of 



I OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


89 


note, such as Guthrie, Murphy, Christopher Smart, and Bick- 
erstaff. He had also a numerous class of hangers-on, the 
smai 1-fry of literature; who, knowing his almost utter incapa¬ 
city to refuse a pecuniary request, were apt, now that he was 
considered flush, to levy continual taxes upon his purse. 

Among others, one Piikington, an old college acquaintance, 
but now a shifting adventurer, duped him in the most ludi¬ 
crous manner. He called on him with a face full of perplexi¬ 
ty. A lady of the first rank having an extraordinary fancy 
for curious animals, for which she was willing to give enor¬ 
mous sums, he had procured a couple of white mice to be for¬ 
warded to her from India. They were actually on board of a 
ship in the river. Her grace had been apprised of their 
arrival, and was all impatience to see them. Unfortunately, 
he had no cage to put them in, nor clothes to appear in before 
a lady of her rank. Two guineas would be sufficient for his 
purpose, but where were two guineas to be procured! 

The simple heart of Goldsmith was touched; but, alas! he 
had but half a guinea in his pocket. It was unfortunate; but 
after a pause his friend suggested, with some hesitation, “that 
money might be raised upon his watch; it would but be the 
loan of a few hours.” So said, so done; the watch was de¬ 
livered to the worthy Mr. Piikington to be pledged at a neigh¬ 
boring pawnbroker’s, but nothing farther was ever seen of 
him, the watch, or the white mice. The next that Goldsmith 
heard of the poor shifting scapegrace, he was on his death 
bed, starving with want, upon which, forgetting or forgiving 
the trick he had played upon him, he sent him a guinea. In 
deed, he used often to relate with great humor the foregoing 
anecdote of his credulity, and was ultimately in some degree 
indemnified by its suggesting to him the amusing little Story 
of Prince Bonbennin and the White Mouse in the Citizen cf the 
World. 

In this year, Goldsmith became personally acquainted with 
Dr. Johnson, toward whom he was drawn by strong sympa¬ 
thies, though their natures were widely different. Both had 
struggled from early life with poverty, but had struggled in 
different ways. Goldsmith, buoyant, heedless, sanguine, toler¬ 
ant of evils and easily pleased, had shifted along by any tem¬ 
porary expedient; cast down at every turn, but rising again 
with indomitable good-humor, and still carried forward by his 
talent at hoping. Johnson^melancholy, and hypochondriacal, 
and prone to apprehend the worst, yet sternly resolute to 


90 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


battle with and conquer it, had made his way doggedly and 
gloomily, but with a noble principle of self-reliance and a dis 
regard of foreign aid. Both had been irregular at college,— 
Goldsmith, as we have shown, from the levity of his nature 
and his social and convivial habits; Johnson, from his acerbity 
and gloom. When, in after life, the latter heard himself 
spoken of as gay and frolicsome at college, because he had 
joined in some riotous excesses there, “Ah, sir!” replied he, 
“I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mis¬ 
took for frolic. I ivas miserably poor , and I thought to fight 
my way by my literature and my wit. So I disregarded all 
power and all authority.” 

Goldsmith’s poverty was never accompanied by bitterness; 
but neither was it accompanied by the guardian pride which 
kept Johnson from falling into the degrading shifts of poverty. 
Goldsmith had an unfortunate facility at borrowing, and help¬ 
ing himself along by the contributions of his friends; no doubt 
trusting, in his hopeful way, of one day making retribution. 
Johnson never hoped, and therefore never borrowed. In his 
sternest trials he proudly bore the ills he could not master. In 
his youth, when some unknown friend, seeing his shoes com¬ 
pletely worn out, left a new pair at his chamber door, he dis¬ 
dained to accept the boon, and threw them away. 

Though like Goldsmith an unmethodical student, he had 
imbibed deeper draughts of knowledge, and made himself a 
riper scholar. While Goldsmith’s happy constitution and 
genial humors carried him abroad into sunshine and enjoy¬ 
ment, Johnson’s physical infirmities and mental gloom drove 
him upon himself; to the resources of reading and meditation; 
threw a deeper though darker enthusiasm into his mind, and 
stored a retentive memory With all kinds of knowledge. 

After several years of youth passed in the country as usher, 
teacher, and an occasional writer for the press, Johnson, when 
twenty-eight years of age, came up to London with a half- 
written tragedy in his pocket; and David Garrick, late his 
pupil, and several years his junior, as a companion, both poor 
and penniless, both, like Goldsmith, seeking their fortune in 
the metropolis. “We rode and tied,” said Garrick sportively 
in after years of prosperity, when he spoke of their humble 
wayfaring. “I came to London,” said Johnson, “with two¬ 
pence halfpenny in my pocket. ” “Eh, what’s that you say?” 
cried Garrick, “with twopence halfpenny in your pocket?” 
“Why, yes; I came with twopence halfpenny in my pocket, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


91 


and thou, Davy, with but three halfpence in thine.” Nor was 
there much exaggeration in the picture; for so poor were they 
in purse and credit, that after their arrival they had, with diffi¬ 
culty, raised five pounds, by giving their joint note to a book¬ 
seller in the Strand. 

Many, many years had Johnson gone on obscurely in London, 
“fighting his way by his literature and his wit;” enduring all 
the hardships and miseries of h Grub Street writer; so desti¬ 
tute at one time, that he and Savage the poet had walked all 
night about St. James’s Square, both too poor to pay for a 
night’s lodging, yet both full of poetry and patriotism, and 
determined to stand by their country; so shabby in dress at 
another time, that when he dined at Cave’s, bis bookseller, 
when there was prosperous company, he could not make his 
appearance at table, but had his dinner handed to him behind 
a screen. 

Yet through all the long and dreary struggle, often diseased 
in mind as well as in body, he had been resolutely self-depen¬ 
dent, and proudly self-respectful; he had fulfilled his college 
vow, he had “fought his way by his literature and his wit.” 
His “ Rambler” and “ Idler” had made him the great moralist 
of the age, and his “Dictionary and History of the English 
Language,” that stupendous monument of individual labor, 
had excited the admiration of the learned world. He was now 
at the head of intellectual society; and had become as dis¬ 
tinguished by his conversational as his literary powers. He 
had become as much an autocrat in his sphere as his fellow- 
wayfarer and adventurer Garrick had become of the stage, 
and had been humorously dubbed by Smollett, “The Great 
Cham of Literature.” 

Such was Dr. Johnson, when on the 81st of May, 1761, he 
was to make his appearance as a guest at a literary supper 
given by Goldsmith, to a numerous party at his new lodgings 
in Wine-Office Court. It was the opening of their acquaint¬ 
ance. Johnson had felt and acknowledged the merit of Gold¬ 
smith as an author, and been pleased by the honoiable mention 
made of himself in the Bee and the “Chinese Letters.” Dr. 
Percy called upon Johnson to take him to Goldsmith’s lodgings; 
he found Johnson arrayed with unusual care in a new suit of 
clothes, a new hat, and a well-powdered wig; and could not 
but notice his uncommon spruceness. “Why, sir,” replied 
Johnson, “I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, 
justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


92 

my practice, and I am desirous tliis niglit to show him a better 
example.” 

The acquaintance thus commenced ripened into intimacy in 
the course of frequent meetings at the shop of Davies, the 
bookseller, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. As this was one 
of the literary gossiping places of the day, especially to the 
circle over which Johnson presided, it is worthy of some | 
^specification. Mr. Thomas Davies, noted in after times as the 
biographer of Garrick, had originally been on the. stage, and 
though a small man had enacted tyrannical tragedy, with a 
pomp and magniloquence beyond his size, if we may trust the 
description given of him by Churchill in the Rosciad: 

“ Statesman all over- -in plots famous grown, 

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone." 

This unlucky sentence is said to have crippled him in the 
midst of his tragic career, and ultimately to have driven him 
from the stage. He carried into the bookselling craft some¬ 
what of the grandiose manner of the stage, and was prene to 
be mouthy and magniloquent. 

Churchill had intimated, that while on the stage he was more 
noted for his pretty wife than his good acting: 

“ With him came mighty Davies: on my life, 

That fellow has a very pretty wife.” 

‘‘Pretty Mrs. Davies,” continued to be the lode-star of his 
fortunes. Her tea-table became almost as much a literary 
lounge as her husband’s shop. She found favor in the eyes of 
the Ursa Major of literature by her winning ways, as she poured 
out for him cups without stint of his favorite beverage. In¬ 
deed it is suggested that she was one leading cause of his habit¬ 
ual resort to this literary haunt. Others were drawn thither 
for the sake of Johnson’s conversation, and thus it became a 
resort of many of the notorieties of the day. Here might 
occasionally be seen Bennet Langton, George Steevens, Dr. 
Percy, celebrated for his ancient ballads, and sometimes War- 
burton in prelatic state. Garrick resorted to it for a time, but 
soon grew shy and suspicious, declaring that most of the 
authors who frequented Mr. Davies’s shop went merely to 
abuse him. 

Foote, the Aristophanes of the day, was a frequent visitor, 
his broad face beaming with fun and waggery, and his satirical 
eye ever on the lookout for characters and incidents for his 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


93 


farces. He was struck with the odd habits and appearance of 
Johnson and Goldsmith; now so often brought together in 
Davies’s shop. He was about to put on the stage a farce called 
The Orators , intended as a hit at the Robin Hood debating 
club, and resolved to show up the two doctors in it for the 
entertainment of the town. 

“ What is the common price of an oak stick, sir?” said 
Johnson to Da vies. ‘ ‘ Sixpence, ” was the reply. ‘ ‘ Why, then, 
sir, give me leave to send your servant to purchase a shilling 
one. I’ll have a double quantity; for I am told Foote means 
to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow 
shall not do it with impunity.” 

Foote had no disposition to undergo the criticism of the cud¬ 
gel wielded by such potent hands, so the farce of The Orators 
appeared without the caricatures of the lexicographer and the 
essayist. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

ORIENTAL PROJECTS—LITERARY JOBS—THE CHEROKEE CHIEFS— 
MERRY ISLINGTON AND THE WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE —LETTERS 
ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND—JAMES BOSWELL—DINNER OF 
DAVIES—ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH. 

Notwithstanding his growing success, Goldsmith continued 
to consider literature a mere makeshift, and his vagrant im¬ 
agination teemed with schemes and plans of a grand but in¬ 
definite nature. One was for visiting the East and exploring 
the interior of Asia. He had, as has been before observed, a 
vague notion that valuable discoveries were to be made there, 
and many useful inventions in the arts brought back to the 
stock of European knowledge. “ Thus, in Siberian Tartary,” 
observes he in one of his writings, “the natives extract a 
strong spirit from milk, which is a secret probably unknown 
to the chemists of Europe. In the most savage parts of In¬ 
dia they are possessed of the secret of dying vegetable sub¬ 
stances scarlet,, and that of refining lead into a metal which, 
for hardness and color, is little inferior to silver.” 

Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited 
to such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in 
view. 



94 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


“He should be a man of philosophical turn, one apt to 
deduce consequences of general utility from particular occur¬ 
rences; neither swoln with pride, nor hardened by prejudice; 
neither wedded to one particular system, nor instructed only 
in one particular science; neither wholly a botanist, nor quite 
an antiquarian; his mind should be tinctured with miscel¬ 
laneous knowledge, and his manners humanized by an inter¬ 
course with men. He should be in some measure an en¬ 
thusiast to the design; fond of travelling, from a rapid 
imagination and an innate love of change; furnished with 
a body capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart 
not easily terrified at danger.” 

In 1701, when Lord Bute became prime minister on the 
accession of George the Third, Goldsmith drew up a me¬ 
morial on the'subject, suggesting the advantages to be derived 
from a mission to those countries solely for useful and 
scientific purposes; and, the better to insure success, he 
preceded his application to the government by an ingenious 
essay to the same effect in the Public Ledger. 

His memorial and his essay were fruitless, his project most 
probably being deemed the dream of a visionary. Still it 
continued to haunt his mind, and he would often talk of 
making an expedition to Aleppo some time or other, when 
his means were greater, to inquire into the arts peculiar 
to the East, and to bring home such as might be valuable. 
Johnson, who knew how little poor Goldsmith was fitted by 
scientific lore for this favorite scheme of his fancy, scoffed at 
the project when it was mentioned to him. “Of all men,” 
said he, “ Goldsmith is the most unfit to go out upon such an 
inquiry, for he is utterly ignorant of such arts as we already 
possess, and, consequently, could not know what would be 
accessions to our present stock of mechanical knowledge. Sir, 
he would bring home a grinding barrow, which you see in 
every street in London, and think that he had furnished a 
wonderful improvement.” 

His connection with Newbery the bookseller now led him 
into a variety of temporary jobs, such as a pamphlet on the 
Cock-lane Ghost, a Life of Beau Nash, the famous Master of 
Ceremonies at Bath, etc.; one of the best things for his fame, 
however, was the remodelling and republication of his Chinese 
Letters under the title of “ The Citizen of the World,” a work 
which has long since taken its merited stand among the 
classics of the English language. “ Few works,” it has been 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


95 


observed by one of his biographers, “exhibit a nicer percep¬ 
tion, or more delicate delineation of life and manners. Wit, 
humor, and sentiment pervade every page; the vices and f ol- 
lies of the day are touched with the most playful and diverting 
satire; and English characteristics, in endless variety, are hit 
off with the pencil of a master.” 

In seeking materials for his varied views of life, he often 
mingled in strange scenes and got involved in whimsical situa¬ 
tions. In the summer of 1762 he was one of the thousands 
who went to see the Cherokee chiefs, whom he mentions in 
one of his writings. The Indians made their appearance in 
grand costume, hideously painted and besmeared. In the 
course of the visit Goldsmith made one of the chiefs a present, 
who, in the ecstasy of his gratitude, gave him an embrace 
that left his face well bedaubed with oil and red ochre. 

Toward the close of 1762 he removed to “ merry Islington, ” 
then a country village, though now swallowed up in omni¬ 
vorous London. He went there for the benefit of country air, 
his health being injured by literary application and confine¬ 
ment, and to be near his chief employer, Mr. Newbery, who 
resided in the Canonbury House. In this neighborhood he 
used to take his solitary rambles, sometimes extending his 
walks to the gardens of the “White Conduit House,” so 
famous among the essayists of the last century. While stroll¬ 
ing one day in these gardens, he met three females of the 
family of a respectable tradesman to whom he was under 
some obligation, With his prompt disposition to oblige, he 
conducted them about the garden, treated them to tea, and 
ran up a bill in the most open-handed manner imaginable; it 
was only when he came to pay that he found himself in one of 
his old dilemmas—he had not the wherewithal in his pocket. 
A scene of perplexity now took place between him and the 
waiter, in the midst of which came up some of his acquaint¬ 
ances, in whose eyes he wished to stand particularly well. 
This completed his mortification. There was no concealing 
the awkwardness of his position. The sneers of the waiter 
revealed it. His acquaintances amused themselves for some 
time at his expense, professing their inability to relieve him. 
When, however, they had enjoyed their banter, the waiter 
was paid, and poor Goldsmith enabled to convoy off the ladies 
with flying colors. 

Among the various productions thrown off by him for tho 
booksellers during this growing period of his reputation, was a 


96 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


small work in two volumes, entitled “ The History of England, 
in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to hisJSon.” It was 
digested from Hume, Rapin, Carte, and Kennet. These 
authors he would read in the morning; make a few notes; 
ramble with a friend into the country about the skirts of 
“merry Islington;” return to a temperate dinner and cheerful 
evening; and, before going to bed, write off what had arranged 
itself in his head from the studies of the morning. In this 
way he took a more general view of the subject, and wrote in 
a more free and fluent style than if he had been mousing all 
the time among authorities. The work, like mauy others 
written by him in the earlier part of his literary career, was 
anonymous. Some attributed it to Lord Chesterfield, others 
to Lord Orrery, and others to Lord Lyttleton. The latter 
seemed pleased to be the putative father, and never disowned 
the bantling thus laid at his door; and well might he have 
been propel to be considered capable of producing what has 
been well pronounced “the most finished and elegant sum¬ 
mary of English history in the same compass that has been or 
is likely to be written.” 

The reputation of Goldsmith, it will be perceived, grew 
slowly; he was known and estimated by a few; but he had 
not those brilliant though fallacious qualities which flash upon 
the public, and excite loud but transient applause. His works 
were more read than cited; and the charm of style, for which 
he was especially noted, was more apt to be felt than talkec 
about. He used often to repine, in a half-humorous, half 
querulous manner, at his tardiness in gaining the laurels 
which he felt to be his due. “The public,” he would exclaim, 
“will never do me justice; whenever I write anything, they 
make a point to know nothing about it.” 

About the beginning of 1763 he became acquainted with Bos¬ 
well, whose literary gossipings w r ere destined to have a delete¬ 
rious effect upon his reputation. Boswell was at that time a 
lyoung man, light, buoyant, pushing, and presumptuous. He 
had a morbid passion for mingling in the society of men noted 
for wit and learning, and had just arrived from Scotland, bent 
upon making his way into the literary circles of the metropo¬ 
lis. An intimacy with Dr. Johnson, the great literary lumi¬ 
nary of the day, was the crowning object of his aspiring and 
somewhat ludicrous ambition. He expected to meet him at a 
dinner to which he was invited at Davies the bookseller’s, but 
was disappointed. Goldsmith was present, but he was not as 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


9 ? 


yet sufficiently renowned to excite the reverence of Boswell. 
“At this time, ” says he in his notes, “ I think he had published 
nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally under¬ 
stood that one Dr. Goldsmith was the author of ‘ An Inquiry 
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe,’and of 
‘ The Citizen of the World,’ a series of letters supposed to be 
written from London by a Chinese.” 

A conversation took place at table between Goldsmith and 
Mr. Robert Dodsley, compiler of the well-known collection of 
modern poetry, as to the merits of the current poetry of the 
day. Goldsmith declared there was none of superior merit. 
Dodsley cited his own collection in proof of the contrary. “It 
is true,” said he, “we can boast of no palaces nowadays, like 
Dryden’s Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day, but we have villages com¬ 
posed of very pretty houses. ” Goldsmith, however, maintained 
that there was nothing above mediocrity, an opinion in which 
Johnson, to whom it was repeated, concurred, and with reason, 
for the era was one of the dead levels of British poetry. 

Boswell has made no note of this conversation; he was a 
Unitarian in his literary devotion, and disposed to worship none 
but Johnson. Little Davies endeavored to console him for his 
disappointment, and to stay the stomach of his curiosity, by 
giving him imitations of the great lexicographer; mouthing his 
■words, rolling his head, and assuming as ponderous a manner 
as his petty person would permit. Boswell was shortly after¬ 
ward made happy by an introduction to Johnson, of whom he 
became the obsequious satellite. From him he likewise im¬ 
bibed a more favorable opinion of Goldsmith’s merits, though 
he was fain to consider them derived in a great measure from 
his Magnus Apollo. “He had sagacity enough,” says he, “to 
cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his 
faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such 
a model. To me and many others it appeared that he studi¬ 
ously copied the manner of Johnson, though, indeed, upon a 
smaller scale.” So on another occasion he calls him “one of 
the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian school.” “His re¬ 
spectful attachment to Johnson,” adds he, “was then at its 
height; for his own literary reputation had not yet distin¬ 
guished him so much as to excite a vain desire of competition 
with his great master.” 

What beautiful instances does the garrulous Boswell give of 
the goodness of heart of Johnson, and the passing homage to it 
by Goldsmith. They were speaking of a Mr. Levett, long an 


98 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


inmate ot Johnson’s house and a dependent on his bounty; but 
■who, Boswell thought, must be an irksome charge upon him. 
“He is poor and honest,” said Goldsmith, “which is recom¬ 
mendation enough to Johnson.” 

Boswell mentioned another person of a very bad character, 
and. wondered at Johnson’s kindness to him. “He is now be¬ 
come miserable,” said Goldsmith, “and that insures the protec¬ 
tion of Johnson. ” Encomiums like these speak almost as much 
for the heart of him who praises as of him who is praised. 

Subsequently, when Boswell had become more intense in his 
literary idolatry, he affected to undervalue Goldsmith, and a 
lurking hostility to him is discernible throughout his writings, 
which some have attributed to a silly spirit of jealousy of the 
superior esteem evinced for the poet by Dr. Johnson. We 
have a gleam of this in his account of the first evening he spent 
in company with those two eminent authors at their famous 
resort, the Mitre Tavern, in Fleet Street. This took place on 
the 1st of July, 1763. The trio supped together, and passed 
some time in literary conversation. On quitting the tavern, 
Johnson, who had now been sociably acquainted with Gold¬ 
smith for two years, and knew his merits, took him with him 
o drink tea with his blind pensioner, Miss Williams, a high 
>rivilege among his intimates and admirers. To Boswell, a re¬ 
cent acquaintance whose intrusive sycophancy had not yet 
made its way into his confidential intimacy, he gave no invita¬ 
tion. Boswell felt it with all the jealousy of a little mind. 
“ Dr. Goldsmith,” says he, in his memoirs, “ being a privileged 
man, went with him, strutting away, and calling to me with 
an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric 
disciple of a sage of antiquity, ‘ I go to Miss Williams.’ I con¬ 
fess I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he 
seemed to be so proud; but it was not long before I obtained 
the same mark of distinction.” 

Obtained! but how ? not like Goldsmith, by the force of un¬ 
pretending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most 
pushing, contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, 
the ambition of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, 
by continually placing himself in juxtaposition with the great 
lexicographer, has something in it perfectly ludicrous. Never, 
since the days of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, has there 
been presented to the world a more whimsically contrasted 
pair of associates than Johnson and Boswell. 

“Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson’s heels?” asked some 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


99 


one when Boswell had worked his way into incessant com¬ 
panionship. “He is not a cur,” replied Goldsmith, “ you are 
too severe; he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at John¬ 
son in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking.” 


CHAPTER XIY. 

HOGARTH A VISITOR AT ISLINGTON—HIS CHARACTER—STREET 
STUDIES—SYMPATHIES BETWEEN AUTHORS AND PAINTERS—SIR 
JOSHUA REYNOLDS—HIS CHARACTER—HIS DINNERS—THE LITER¬ 
ARY CLUB—ITS MEMBERS—JOHNSON’S REVELS WITH LANKEY 
AND BEAU—GOLDSMITH AT THE CLUB. 

Among the intimates who used to visit the poet occasionally 
in his retreat at Islington, was Hogarth the painter. Gold¬ 
smith had spoken well of him in his essays in the Public 
Ledger , and this formed the first link in their friendship. He 
was at this time upward of sixty years of age, and is described 
as a stout, active, bustling little man, in a sky-blue coat, satiri¬ 
cal ana dogmatic, yet full of real benevolence and the love of 
human nature. He was the moralist and philosopher of the 
pencil; like Goldsmith he had sounded the depth of vice and 
misery, without being polluted by them; and though his pic- 
turings had not the pervading amenity of those of the essayist, 
and dwelt more on the crimes and vices than the follies and 
humors of mankind, yet they were all calculated, in like man¬ 
ner, to fill the mind with instruction and precept, and to make 
the heart better. 

Hogarth does not appear to have had much of the rural feel¬ 
ing with which Goldsmith was so amply endowed, and may 
not have accompanied him in his strolls about hedges and 
green lanes; but he was a fit companion with whom to ex¬ 
plore the mazes of London, in which he was continually on 
the look-out for character and incident. One of Hogarth’s 
admirers speaks of having come upon him in Castle Street, 
engaged in one of his street studies, watching two boys who 
were quarrelling; patting one on the back who flinched, and 
endeavoring to spirit him up to a fresh encounter. “At him 
again! D — him, if I would take it of him! at him again!” 

A frail memorial of this intimacy between the painter and 
the poet exists in a portrait in oil, called “Goldsmith’s Host- 



100 


OLIVER QOLDSMITh. 


ess.” It is supposed to have been painted by Hogarth in the 
course of his visits to Islington, and given by him to the poet 
as a means of paying his landlady. There are no friendships 
among men of talents more likely to be sincere than those be* 
tween painters and poets. Possessed of the same qualities of 
mind, governed by the same principles of taste and natural 
laws of grace and beauty, but applying them to different yet 
mutually illustrative arts, they are constantly^ sympathy and 
never in collision with each other. 

A still more congenial intimacy of the kind was that con¬ 
tracted by Goldsmith with Mr. afterward Sir Joshua Rey¬ 
nolds. The latter was now about forty years of age, a few 
years older than the poet, whom he charmed by the blandness 
and benignity of his manners, and the nobleness and generos¬ 
ity of his disposition, as much as he did by the graces of his 
pencil and the magic of his coloring. They were men of kin¬ 
dred genius, excelling in corresponding qualities of their sev¬ 
eral arts, for style in writing is what color is in painting; both 
are innate endowments, and equally magical in their effects. 
Certain graces and harmonies of both may be acquired by dili¬ 
gent study and imitation, but only in a limited degree; where¬ 
as by their natural possessors they are exercised spontaneous¬ 
ly, almost unconsciously, and with ever-varying fascination. 
Reynolds soon understood and appreciated the merits of Goldv 
smith, and a sincere and lasting friendship ensued between 
them. 

At Reynolds’s house Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of 
company than he had been accustomed to. The fame of this 
celebrated artist, and his amenity of manners, were gathering 
round him men of talents of all kinds, and the increasing afflu¬ 
ence of his circumstances enabled him to give full indulgence 
to his hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, 
like Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his 
external defects and his want of the air of good society. Miss 
Reynolds used to inveigh against his personal appearance, 
which gave her the idea, she said, of a low mechanic, a jour¬ 
neyman tailor. One evening at a large supper party, being 
called upon to give as a toast, the ugliest man she knew, she 
gave Dr. Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and 
whom she had never met before, shook hands with her across 
the table, and “hoped to become better acquainted.” 

We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds’s hos¬ 
pitable but motley establishment, in an account given by a 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


10) 


Mr. Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh; though it speaks of a 
time after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. 
“There was something singular,” said he, “in the style and 
economy of Sir Joshua’s table that contributed to pleasantry 
and good-humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any re¬ 
gard to order and arrangement. At five o’clock precisely, 
dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived 
or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to 
wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or title, 
and put the rest of the company out of humor by this invidi¬ 
ous distinction. His invitations, however, did not regulate 
the number of his guests. Many dropped in uninvited. A 
table prepared for seven or eight was often compelled to con¬ 
tain fifteen or sixteen. There was a consequent deficiency 
of knives, forks, plates, and glasses. The attendance was 
in the same style, and those who were knowing in the ways 
of the house took care on sitting down to call instantly for 
beer, bread, or wine, that they might secure a supply before 
the first course was over. He was once prevailed on to fur¬ 
nish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to save 
time and prevent confusion. These gradually were demolished 
in the course of service, and were never replaced. These tri¬ 
fling embarrassments, however, only served to enhance the hi¬ 
larity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wine, 
cookery and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the 
fish or venison ever talked of or recommended. Amid this 
convivial animated bustle among his guests, our host sat per¬ 
fectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never 
minding what was ate or drank, but left every one at perfect 
liberty to scramble for himself. 

Out of this casual but frequent meeting of men of talent at 
this hospitable board rose that association of wits, authors, 
scholars, and statesmen, renowned as the Literary Club. Rey¬ 
nolds was the first to propose a regular association of the kind, 
and was eagerly seconded by Johnson, who proposed as a 
model a club which he had formed many years previously in 
Ivy Lane, but which was now extinct. Like that club the 
number of members was limited to nine. They were to meet 
and sup together once a week,, on Monday night, at the Turk’s 
Head on Gerard Street, Soho, and two members were to con¬ 
stitute a meeting. It took a regular form in the year 1764, but 
did not receive its literary appellation until several years after* 
ward. 


102 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. 
Nugent, Bennet Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Chamier, Haw¬ 
kins, and Goldsmith; and here a few words concerning some 
of the members may be acceptable. Burke was at that time 
about thirty-three years of age; he had mingled a little in 
politics, and been Under Secretary to Hamilton at Dublin, but 
was again a writer for the booksellers, and as yet but in the 
dawning of his fame. Dr. Nugent was his father-in-law, a 
Romaii Catholic, and a physician of talent and instruction. 
Mr. afterward Sir John Hawkins was admitted into this asso¬ 
ciation from having been a member of Johnson’s Ivy Lane 
club. Originally an attorney, he had retired from the prac¬ 
tice of the law, in consequence of a large fortune which fell 
to him in right of his wife, and was now a Middlesex magis¬ 
trate. He was, moreover, a dabbler in literature and music, 
and was actually engaged on a history of music, which he 
subseuqently published in five ponderous volumes. To him 
we are also indebted for a biography of Johnson, which ap¬ 
peared after the death of that eminent man. Hawkins was 
as mean and parsimonious as' he was pompous and conceited. 
He forbore to partake of the suppers at the club, and begged 
therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckon¬ 
ing. “ And was he excused?’’ asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. 

‘ ‘ Oh yes, for no man is angry at another for being inferior to 
himself. We all scorned him and admitted his plea. Yet I 
really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though to 
be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned 
he has a tendency to savageness.” He did not remain above 
two or three years in the club; being in a manner elbowed out 
in consequence of his rudeness to Burke. 

Mr. Anthony Chamier was secretary in the War Office, and 
a friend of Beauclerc, • by whom he was proposed. We 
have left our mention of Bennet Langton and Topham Beau¬ 
clerc until the last, because we have most to say about them. 
They were doubtless induced to join the club through their 
devotion to Johnson, and the intimacy of these two very 
young and aristocratic young men with the stern and some¬ 
what melancholy moralist is among the curiosities of literature. 

Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their 
ancestral estate of Langton in Lincolnshire, a great title to 
respect with Johnson. “Langton, sir,” he would say, “has a 
grant of free warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal 
Stephen Langton, in King John’s reign, was of this family.” 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


103 


Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. 
When but eighteen years of age he was so delighted with 
reading Johnson’s “Rambler,” that he came to London chiefly 
with a view to obtain an introduction to the author. Bos¬ 
well gives us an account of his first interview, which took 
place in the morning. It is not often that the personal ap¬ 
pearance of an author agrees with the preconceived ideas of 
his admirer. Langton, from perusing the writings of John¬ 
son, expected to find him a decent, well-dressed, in short a 
remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down 
from his bedchamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a 
large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely 
covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. 
But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forci¬ 
ble, and his religious and political notions so congenial with 
those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived 
for him that veneration and attachment which he ever pre¬ 
served. 

Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Ox¬ 
ford, where Johnson saw much of him during a visit which 
he paid to the university. He found him in close intimacy 
with Topham Beauclerc, a youth two years older than him¬ 
self, very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies 
could draw two young men together of such opposite char¬ 
acters. On becoming acquainted with Beauclerc he found 
that, rake though he was, he possessed an ardent love of lite¬ 
rature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate gentility 
and high aristocratic breeding. He was, morever, the only 
son of Lord Sidney Beauclerc and grandson of the Duke of 
St. Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a 
resemblance to Charles the Second. These were high recom¬ 
mendations with Johnson, and when the youth testified a 
profound respect for him and an ardent admiration of his 
talents the conquest was complete, so that in a “short time,” 
says Boswell, “the moral pious Johnson and the gay dissi¬ 
pated Beauclerc were companions.” 

The intimacy begun in college chambers was continued 
when the youths came to town during the vacations. The un¬ 
couth, unwieldy moralist was flattered at finding himself an 
object of idolatry to two high-born, high-bred, aristocratic 
young men, and throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in 
their vagaries and play the part of a “young man upon 
town.” Such at least is the picture given of him by BosweK 


10 * 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


on one occasion when Beauclerc and Langton having supped 
together at a tavern determined to give Johnson a rouse at 
three o’clock in the morning. They accordingly rapped vio¬ 
lently at the door of his chambers in the Temple. The in¬ 
dignant sage sallied forth in his shirt, poker in hand, and a 
little black wig on the top of his head, instead of helmet; 
prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his castle; 
but when his two young friends, Lankey and Beau, as he 
used to call them, presented themselves, summoning him forth 
to a morning ramble, his whole manner changed. “What, 
is it you, ye dogs?” cried he. “Faith, I’ll have a frisk with 
you!” 

So said so done. They sallied forth together into Covent 
Garden; figured among the green grocers and fruit women, 
just come in from the country with their hampers; repaired 
to a neighboring tavern, where Johnson brewed a bowl of 
bishop, a favorito beverage with him, grew merry over his 
cups, and anathematized sleep in two lines from Lord Lans- 
downe’s drinking song: 

“ Short, very short, be then thy reign, 

For I’m in haste to laugh and drink again.” 

They then took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and John¬ 
son and Beauclerc determined, like “mad wags,” to “keep 
it up” for the rest of the day. Langton, however, the most" 
sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement to break¬ 
fast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist 
reproached him with ‘ ‘ leaving his social friends to go and 
sit with a set of wretched unidea 1 d girls.” 

This madcap freak of the great lexicographer made a sensa¬ 
tion, as may well be supposed, among his intimates. “ I heard 
of your frolic t’other night,” said Garrick to him; “you’ll be 
in the Chronicle .” He uttered worse forebodings to others. 
“I shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house,” 
said he. Johnson, however, valued himself upon having thus 
enacted a chapter in the “Rake’s Progress,” and crowed over 
Garrick on the occasion. u He durst not do such a thing!” 
chuckled he, “his wife would not let him!” 

When these two young men entered the club, Langton was 
about twenty-two, and Beauclerc about twenty-four years of 
age, and both were launched on London life. Langton, how¬ 
ever, was still the mild, enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the 
lips with fine conversational powers, and an invaluable talent 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


105 


for listening. He was upward of six feet high, and very spare. 
“Oh! that we could sketch him,” exclaims Miss Hawkins, in 
her Memoirs, “with his mild countenance, his elegant features, 
and his sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the 
other, as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; 
his person inclining forward, as if wanting strength to support 
his weight, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands 
locked together on his knee.” Beauclerc, on such occasions, 
sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael’s Cartoons, 
standing on one leg. Beauclerc was more ’“a man upon town, ” 
a lounger in St. James’s Street, an associate with George Selwyn, 
with Walpole, and other aristocratic wits; a man of fashion at 
court; a casual frequenter of the gaming-table; yet with all 
this, he alternated in the easiest and happiest manner the 
scholar and the man of letters; lounged into the club with the 
most perfect self-possession, bringing with him the careless 
grace and polished wit of high-bred society, but making him¬ 
self cordially at home among his learned fellow-members. 

The gay yet lettered rake maintained his sway over Johnson, 
who was fascinated by that air of the world, that ineffable 
tone of good society in which he felt himself deficient, espe¬ 
cially as the possessor of it always paid homage to his superior 
talent. “ Beauclerc,” he would say, using a quotation from 
Pope, “ has a love of folly, but a scorn of fools; everything he 
does shows the one, and everything he says the other.” Beau¬ 
clerc delighted in rallying the stern moralist of whom others 
stood in awe, and no one, according to Boswell, could take 
equal liberty with him with impunity. Johnson, it is well 
known, was often shabby and negligent in his dress, and not 
over-cleanly in his person. On receiving a pension from the 
crown, his friends vied with each other in respectful congratu¬ 
lations. Beauclerc simply scanned his person with a whim¬ 
sical glance, and hoped that, like Falstaff, “he’d in future 
purge and live cleanly like a gentleman.” Johnson took the 
hint with unexpected good humor, and profited by it. 

Still Beauclerc’s satirical vein, which darted shafts on every 
side, was not always tolerated by Johnson. “ Sir,” said he on 
one occasion, “ you never open your mouth but with intention 
to give pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the 
power of what you have said, but from seeing your inten¬ 
tion. ” 

When it was first proposed to enroll Goldsmith among the 
members of this association, there seems to have been some 


106 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


demur; at least so says the pompous Hawkins. “ As he wrote 
for the booksellers, we of the club looked on him as a mere 
literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, 
but little capable of original and still less of poetical composi¬ 
tion.” 

Even for some time after his admission, he continued to be 
regarded in a dubious light by some of the members. Johnson 
and Reynolds, of course, were well aware of his merits, nor 
was Burke a stranger to them; but to the others he was as yet 
a sealed book, and the outside was not prepossessing. His un¬ 
gainly person and awkward manners were against him with 
men accustomed to the graces of society, and he was not suffi¬ 
ciently at home to give play to his humor and to that bonho¬ 
mie which won the hearts of all who knew him. He felt 
strange and out of place in this new sphere; he felt at times 
the cool satirical eye of the courtly Beauclerc scanning him, 
and the more he attempted to appear at his ease, the more 
awkward he became. 


CHAPTER XV. 

JOHNSON A MONITOR TO GOLDSMITH—FINDS HIM IN DISTRESS 
WITH HIS LANDLADY—RELIEVED BY THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
—THE ORATORIO—POEM OF THE TRAVELLER—THE POET AND 
HIS DOG—SUCCESS OF THE POEM—ASTONISHMENT OF THE 
CLUB—OBSERVATIONS ON THE POEM. 

Johnson had now become one of Goldsmith’s best friends 
and advisers. He knew all the weak points of his character, 
but he knew also his merits; and while he would rebuke him 
like a child, and rail at his errors and follies, he would suffer 
no one else to undervalue him. Goldsmith knew the sound¬ 
ness of his judgment and his practical benevolence, and often 
sought his counsel and aid amid the difficulties into which his 
heedlessness was continually plunging him. 

“I received one morning,” says Johnson, “a message from 
poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was 
not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to 
him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to 
come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


107 


dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his 
rent, at which he was in a violent passion; I perceived that 
he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of 
Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the 
bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of 
the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me 
he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. 
I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should 
soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty 
pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged 
his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for 
having used him so ill. ” 

The novel in question was the “Vicar of Wakefield;” the 
bookseller to whom Johnson sold it was Francis Newbery, 
nephew to John. Strange as it may seem, this captivating 
vork, which has obtained and preserved an almost unrivalled 
popularity in various languages, was so little appreciated by 
the bookseller, that he kept it by him for nearly two years un¬ 
published ! 

Goldsmith had, as yet, produced nothing of moment in 
poetry. Among his literary jobs, it is true, was an oratorio 
entitled “ The Captivity, ” founded on the bondage of the Israel¬ 
ites in Babylon. It was one of those unhappy offsprings of 
the muse ushered into existence amid the distortions of music. 
Most of the oratorio has passed into oblivion; but the follow¬ 
ing song from it will never die: 

“ The wretch condemned from life to part, 

Still, still on hope relies, 

And every pang that rends the heart 
Bids expectation rise. 

“ Hope, like the glimmering taper’s light, 

Illumes and cheers our way; 

And still, as darker grows the night, 

Emits a brighter ray.” 

Goldsmith distrusted his qualifications to succeed in poetry, 
and doubted the disposition of the public mind in regard to it. 
“ I fear,” said he, “ I have come too late into the world; Pope 
and other poets have taken up the places in the temple of 
Fame; and as few at any period can possess poetical reputa¬ 
tion, a man of genius can now hardly acquire it.” Again, on 
another occasion, he observes: “Of all kinds of ambition, as 
things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which pursues 
poetical fame is the wildest. What from the increased refine- 


108 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


ment of the times, from the diversity of judgment produced 
by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent 
divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and hap¬ 
piest efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle.” 

At this very time he had by him his poem of “ The Travel¬ 
ler. ” The plan of it, as has already been observed, was con¬ 
ceived many years before, during his travels in Switzerland, 
and a sketch of it sent from that country to his brother Henry 
in Ireland. The original outline is said to have embraced a 
wider scope; but it was probably contracted through diffidence, 
in the process of finishing the parts. It had lain by him for 
several years in a crude state, and it was with extreme hesita¬ 
tion and after much revision that he at length submitted it to 
Dr. Johnson. The frank and warm approbation of the latter 
encouraged him to finish it for the press; and Dr. Johnson 
himself contributed a fewlines toward the conclusion. 

We hear much about “poetic inspiration, ” and “the poet’s 
eye in a fine frenzy rolling;” but Sir Joshua Reynolds gives an 
anecdote of Goldsmith while engaged upon his poem, calculated 
to cure our notions about the ardor of composition. Calling 
upon the poet one day, he opened the door without ceremony, 
and found him in the double occupation of turning a couplet 
and teaching a pet dog to sit upon his haunches. At one time 
he would glance his eye at his desk, and at another shake his 
finger at the dog to make him retain his position. The last 
lines on the page were still wet; they form a part of the descrip¬ 
tion of Italy: 

“ By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, 

The sports of children satisfy the child.” 

Goldsmith, with his usual good-humor, joined in the laugh 
caused by his whimsical employment, and acknowledged that 
his boyish sport with the dog suggested the stanza. 

The poem was published on the 19th of December, 1764, in a 
quarto form, by Newbery, and was the first of his works to 
which Goldsmith prefixed his name. As a testimony of cher¬ 
ished and well-merited affection, he dedicated it to his brother 
Henry. There is an amusing affectation of indifference as to its 
' expressed in the dedication. ‘ 1 What reception a poem 
may find,” says he, “which has neither abuse, party, nor blank 
verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know.” 
The truth is, no one was more emulous and anxious for poetic 
fame; and never was he more anxious than in the present 


OLIVER GOLDSMITn. 


100 


instance, for it was his grand stake. Dr. Johnson aided the 
launching of the poem by a favorable notice in the Critical 
Review; other periodical works came out in its favor. Some 
of the author’s friends complained that it did not command in¬ 
stant and wide popularity; that it was a poem to win, not to 
strike; it went on rapidly increasing in favor; in three months 
a second edition was issued; shortly afterward a third; then a 
fourth; and, before the year was out, the author was pro- 
nounced the best poet of his time. 

The appearance of “The Traveller” at once altered Gold¬ 
smith’s intellectual standing in the estimation of society; but 
its effect upon the club, if we may judge from the account 
given by Hawkins, was most ludicrous. They were lost in as¬ 
tonishment that a “newspaper essayist” and. “bookseller’s 
drudge” should have written such a poem. On the evening of 
its announcement to them Goldsmith had gone away early, 
after “rattling away as usual,” and they knew not how to 
reconcile his heedless garrulity with the serene beauty, the 
easy grace, the sound good sense, and the occasional elevation 
of his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic 
numbers had flowed from a man to whom in general, says 
Johnson, “it was with difficulty they could give a hearing.’ 
“ Well,” exclaimed Chamier, “ I do believe he wrote this poem 
himself, and let me tell you, that is believing a great deal. ” 

At the next meeting of the club Chamier sounded the author 
a little about his poem. “Mr. Goldsmith,” said he, “what do 
you mean by the last word in the first line of your £ Traveller, 

‘ remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow'? do you mean tardinesss 
of locomotion?” “Yes,” replied Goldsmith inconsiderately, 
being probably flurried at the moment. “ No, sir,” interposed 
his protecting friend Johnson, “you did not mean tardiness of 
locomotion; you meant that sluggishness of mind which comes 
upon a man in solitude.” “ Ah,” exclaimed Goldsmith, “ that 
was what I meant.” Chamier immediately believed that John¬ 
son himself had written the line, and a rumor became pre¬ 
valent that he was the author of many of tho finest passages. 
This was ultimately set at rest by Johnson himself, who marked 
with a pencil all the verses he had contributed, nine in number, 
inserted toward the conclusion, and by no means the best in 
the poem. He moreover, with generous warmth, pronounced 
it the finest poem that had appeared since the days of Pope. 

But one of the highest testimonials to the charm of the poem 
was given by Miss Reynolds, who had toasted poor Goldsmith 


110 


0 LI VER G OLD SMI TIL 


as the ugliest man of her acquaintance. Shoruy after the ap¬ 
pearance of “The Traveller,” Dr. Johnson read it aloud from 
beginning to end in her presence. “Well,” [exclaimed she, 
when he had finished, “I never more shall think Dr. Gold¬ 
smith ugly 1” 

On another occasion, when the merits of “The Traveller” 
were discussed at Reynolds’s board, Langton declared “There 
was not a bad line in the poem, not one of Dryden’s careless 
verses.” “I was glad,” observed Reynolds, “to hear Charles 
tTox say it was one of the finest poems in the English language.” 
“Why wer b you glad ?” rejoined Langton; ‘ ‘ you surely had no 
doubt of this before.” “No,” interposed Johnson, decisively; 
“the merit of ‘The Traveller’ is so well established that Mr. 
Fox’s praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it.” 

Boswell, who was absent from England at the time of the 
publication of “ The Traveller,” was astonished, on his return, 
to find Goldsmith, whom he had so much undervalued, sud¬ 
denly elevated almost to a par with his idoi. He accounted for 
it by concluding that much both of the sentiments and expres¬ 
sion of the poem had been derived from conversations with 
Johnson. “He imitates you, sir,” said this incarnation of 
toadyism. “Why, no, sir,” replied Johnson, “Jack Hawks- 
worth is one of my imitators, but not Goldsmith. Goldy, sir, 
has great merit.” “But, sir, he is much indebted to you for 
his getting so high in the public estimation.” “Why, sir, he 
has, perhaps, got sooner to it by his intimacy with me.” 

The poem went through several editions in the course of the 
first year, and received some few additions and corrections 
from the author’s pen. It produced a golden harvest to Mr. 
Newbery, but all the remuneration on record, doled out by his 
niggard hand to the author, was twenty guineas! 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 


Ill 


CHAPTER XVI. 

NEW LODGINGS—JOHNSON’S COMPLIMENT—A TITLED PATRON—THE 
POET AT NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE—HIS INDEPENDENCE OF THE 
GREAT — THE COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND — EDWIN AND 
ANGELINA—GOSFORD AND LORD CLARE—PUBLICATION OF ES¬ 
SAYS— EVILS OF A RISING REPUTATION — HANGERS-ON — JOB 
WRITING — GOODY TWO SHOES—A MEDICAL CAMPAIGN — MRS. 
SIDEBOTHAM. 

Goldsmith, now that he was rising in the world, and becom¬ 
ing a notoriety, felt himself called upon to improve his style 
of living. He accordingly emerged from Wine-Office Court, 
and took chambers in the Temple. It is true they were but 
of humble pretensions, situated on what was then the library 
staircase, and it would appear that he was a kind of inmate 
with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Still he was in the Tem¬ 
ple, that classic region rendered famous by the Spectator and 
other essayists, as the abode of gay wits and thoughtful men 
of letters; and which, with its retired courts and embow¬ 
ered gardens, in the very heart of a noisy metropolis, is, 
to the quiet-seeking student and author, an oasis freshening 
with verdure in the midst of a desert. Johnson, who had be¬ 
come a kind of growling supervisor of the poet’s affairs, paid 
him a visit soon after he had installed himself in his new quar¬ 
ters, and went prying about the apartment, in his near-sighted 
manner, examining everything minutely. Goldsmith was 
fidgeted by this curious scrutiny, and apprehending a dispo¬ 
sition to find fault, exclaimed, with the air of a man who had 
money in both pockets, ‘ ‘ I shall soon be in better chambers 
than these.” The harmless bravado drew a reply from John¬ 
son, which touched the chord of proper pride. “Nay, sir,” 
said he, “never mind that. Nil te qusesiveris extra,” imply¬ 
ing that his reputation rendered him independent of outward 
show. Happy would it have been for poor Goldsmith, could 
he have kept this consolatory compliment perpetually in mind, 
and squared his expenses accordingly. 

Among the persons of rank who were struck with the merits 
of “The Traveller” was the Earl (afterward Duke) of North¬ 
umberland. He procured several other of Goldsmith’s writ* 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


112 

ings, the perusal cf which tended to elevate the author in his 
good opinion, and to gain for him his good will. The earl held 
the office of Lord Lieutenant of j Ireland, and understanding 
Goldsmith was an Irishman, was disposed to extend to him 
the patronage which his high post afforded. He intimated 
the same to his relative, Dr. Percy, who, he found, was well 
acquainted with the poet, and expressed a wish that the latter 
should wait upon him. Here, then, was another opportunity 
for Goldsmith to better his fortune, had he been knowing and 
worldly enough to profit by it. Uuluckily the path to fortune 
lay through the aristocratical mazes of Northumberland House, 
and the poet blundered at the outset. The following is the ac¬ 
count he used to give of his visit: “I dressed myself in the 
best manner I could, and, after studying some compliments I 
thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to North¬ 
umberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had par¬ 
ticular business with the duke. They showed me into an ante¬ 
chamber, where, after waiting some time, a gentleman, very 
elegantly dressed, made his appearance; taking him for the 
duke, I delivered all the fine things I had composed in order 
to compliment him on the honor he had done me; when, to 
my great astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for 
his master, who would see me immediately. At that instant 
the duke came into the apartment, and I was so confounded 
on the occasion, that I wanted words barely sufficient to ex¬ 
press the sense I entertained of the duke’s politeness, and 
went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had com¬ 
mitted.” 

Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Dr. Johnson, gives some 
further particulars of this visit, of which he w;as, in part, a 
witness. “ Having one day,” says he, “a call to make on the 
late Duke, then Earl, of Northumberland, I found Goldsmith 
waiting for an audience in an outer room; I asked him what 
had brought him there; he told me, an invitation from his 
lordship. I made my business as short as I could, and, as a 
reason, mentioned that Dr. Goldsmith was waiting without. 
The earl asked me if I was acquainted with him. I told him 
that I was, adding what I thought most likely to recommend 
him. I retired, and stayed in the outer room to take him 
home. Upon his coming out, I asked him the result of his con¬ 
versation. ‘His lordship,’ said he, ‘told me he had read my 
poem, meaning “The Traveller,” and was much delighted 
with it; that he was going to be lord-lieutenant of Iceland, 


I 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 113 

and that hearing I was a native of that country, he should 
be glad to do me any kindness.’ ‘ And what did you answer,’ 
said I, ‘to this gracious offer?’ ‘ Why,’ said he, ‘I could say 
nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood 
in need of help: as for myself, I have no great dependence on 
the promises of great men; I look to the booksellers for sup¬ 
port ; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to for¬ 
sake them for others.’” “Thus,” continues Sir John, “did 
this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes, 
and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.” 

We cannot join with Sir John in his worldly sneer at the 
conduct of Goldsmith on this occasion. While we admire that 
honest independence of spirit which prevented him from ask¬ 
ing favors for himself, we love that warmth of affection which 
instantly sought to advance the fortunes of a brother: but the 
peculiar merits of Goldsmith seem to have been little under¬ 
stood by the Hawkinses, the Boswells, and the other biogra¬ 
phers of the day. 

After all, the introduction to Northumberland House did not 
prove so complete a failure as the humorous account given by 
Goldsmith, and the cynical account given by Sir John Haw¬ 
kins, might lead one to suppose. Dr. Percy, the heir male of 
the ancient Percies, brought the poet into the acquaintance of 
his kinswoman, the countess, who, before her marriage with 
the earl, was in her own right heiress of the House of North¬ 
umberland. “She was a lady,” says Boswell, “not only of 
high dignity of spirit, such as became her noble blood, but of 
excellent understanding and lively talents.” Under her aus¬ 
pices a poem of Goldsmith’s had an aristocratical introduction 
to the world. This was the beautiful ballad of the “ Hermit,” 
originally published under the name of “ Edwin and Angelina.” 
It was suggested by an old English ballad beginning “Gentle 
Herdsman,” shown him by Dr. Percy, who was at that time 
making his famous collection, entitled “Reliques'of Ancient 
English Poetry,” which he submitted to the inspection of 
Goldsmith prior to publication. A few copies only of the 
“Hermit” were printed at first, with the following title-page: 
“Edwin and Angelina: a Ballad. By Mr. Goldsmith. Printed 
for the Amusement of the Countess of Northumberland.” 

All this, though it may not have been attended with any 
immediate pecuniary advantage, contributed to give Gold¬ 
smith’s name and poetry the high stamp of fashion, so potent 
in England; the circle at Northumberland House, however, 


114 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


was of too stately and aristocratical a nature to be much to 
his taste, and we do not find that he became familiar in it. 

He was much more at home at Gosfield, the noble seat of his 
countryman, Robert Nugent, afterward Baron Nugent and 
Viscount Clare, who appreciated his merits even more heartily 
than the Earl of Northumberland, and occasionally made him 
his guest both in town and country. Nugent is described as a 
jovial voluptuary, who left the Roman Catholic for the Pro¬ 
testant religion, with a view to bettering his fortunes; he had 
an Irishman’s inclination for rich widows, and an Irishman’s 
luck with the sex; having been thrice married and gained a 
fortune with each wife. He was now nearly sixty, with, a re¬ 
markably loud voice, broad Irish brogue, and ready, but some¬ 
what coarse wit. With all his occasional coarseness he was 
capable of high thought, and had produced poems which 
showed a truly poetic vein. He was long a member of the 
House of Commons, where his ready wit, his fearless decision, 
and good-humored audacity of expression, always gained him 
a hearing, though his tall person and awkward manner gained 
him the nickname of Squire Gawky, among the political scrib¬ 
blers of the day. With a patron of this jovial temperament, 
Goldsmith probably felt more at ease than with those of higher 
refinement. 

The celebrity which Goldsmith had acquired by his poem of 
“The Traveller,” occasioned a resuscitation of many of his 
miscellaneous and anonymous tales and essays from the va¬ 
rious newspapers and other transient publications in which 
they lay dormant. These he published in 1765, in a collected 
form, under the title of “Essays by Mr. Goldsmith.” “The 
following essays,” observes he in his preface, “have already 
appeared at different times, and in different publications. 
The pamphlets in which they were inserted being generally 
unsuccessful, these shared the common fate, without assisting 
the booksellers’ aims, or extending the author’s reputation. 
The public were too strenuously employed with their own fol¬ 
lies to be assiduous in estimating mine; so that many of my 
best attempts in this way have fallen victims to the transient 
topic of the times—the Ghost in Cock-lane, or the Siege of 
Ticonderoga. 

“But, though they have passed pretty silently into the 
world, I can by no means complain of their circulation. The 
magazines and papers of the day have indeed been liberal 
enough in this respect. Most of these essays have been regu- 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


115 


larly reprinted twice or thrice a year, and conveyed to the 
public through the kennel of some engaging compilation. If 
there be a pride in multiplied editions, I have seen some of my 
labors sixteen times reprinted, and claimed by different parents 
as their own. I have seen them flourished at the beginning 
with praise, and signed at the end with the names of Philautos, 
Pliilalethes, Phileleutheros, and Philanthropos. It is time, 
however, at last to vindicate my claims; and as these enter¬ 
tainers of the public, as they call themselves, have partly lived 
upon me for some years, let me now try if I cannot live a little 
upon myself.” 

It was but little, in Tact, for all the pecuniary emolument he 
received from the volume was twenty guineas. It had a good 
circulation, however, was translated into French, and has 
maintained its stand among the British classics. 

Notwithstanding that the reputation of Goldsmith had 
greatly risen, his finances were often at a very low ebb, owing 
to his heedlessness as to expense, his liability to be imposed 
upon, and a spontaneous and irresistible propensity to give to 
every one who asked. The very rise in his reputation had in¬ 
creased these embarrassments. It had enlarged his circle oi 
needy acquaintances, authors poorer in pocket than himself, 
who came in search of literary counsel; which generally meant 
a guinea and a breakfast. And then his Irish hangers-on! 
“Our Doctor,” said one of these sponges, “had a constant 
levee of his distressed countrymen, whose wants, as far as ' 
was able, he always relieved; and he has often been known to 
leave himself without a guinea, in order to supply the neces¬ 
sities of others.” 

This constant drainage of the purse therefore obliged him to 
undertake all jobs proposed by the booksellers, and to keep up 
a kind of running account with Mr. Newbery; who was his 
banker on all occasions, sometimes for pounds, sometimes for 
shillings; but who was a rigid accountant, and took care to be 
amply repaid in manuscript. Many effusions hastily penned 
in these moments of exigency, were published anonymously, 
and never claimed. Some of them have but recently been 
traced to his pen; while of many the true authorship will 
probably never be discovered. Among others it is suggested, 
and with great probability, that he wrote for Mr. Newbery the 
famous nursery story of “ Goody Two Shoes,” which appeared 
in 1765, at a moment when Goldsmith was scribbling for New¬ 
bery, and much pressed for funds. Several quaint little tales 


116 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


introduced in his Essays show that he had a turn for this 
species of mock history; and the advertisement and title-page 
hear the stamp of his sly and playful humor. 

‘ ‘ We are desired to give notice, that there is in the press, and 
speedily will be published, either by subscription or otherwise, 
as the public shall please to determine, the History of Little 
Goody Two Shoes, otherwise Mrs. Margery Two Shoes; with 
the means by which she acquired learning and wisdom, and, 
in consequence thereof, her estate; set forth at large for the 
benefit of those 


* Who, from a state of rags and care, 
And having shoes but half a pair, 

Their fortune and their fame should fix, 
And gallop in a coach and six.” 


The world is probably not aware of the ingenuity, humor, 
good sense, and sly satire contained in many of the old Eng¬ 
lish nursery-tales. They have evidently been the sportive pro¬ 
ductions of able write us, who would not trust their names to 
productions that might be considered beneath their dignity. 
The ponderous works on which they relied for immortality 
have perhaps sunk into oblivion, and carried their names 
down with them; while their unacknowledged offspring, Jack 
the Giant Killer, Giles Gingerbread, and Tom Thumb, flourish 
in wide-spreading and never-ceasing popularity. 

As Goldsmith had now acquired popularity and an extensive 
acquaintance, he attempted, with the advice of his friends, to 
procure a more regular and ample support by resuming the 
medical profession. He accordingly launched himself upon the 
town in style; hired a man-servant; replenished his wardrobe 
at considerable expense, and appeared in a professional wig and 
cane, purple silk small-clothes, and a scarlet roquelaure but¬ 
toned to the chin: a fantastic garb, as we should think at the 
present day, but not unsuited to the fashion of the times. 

With his sturdy little person thus arrayed in the unusual 
magnificence of purple and fine linen, and his scarlet roquelaure 
flaunting from his shoulders, he used to strut into the apart¬ 
ments of his patients swaying his three-cornered hat in one 
. hand and his medical sceptre, the cane, in the other, and as¬ 
suming an air of gravity and importance suited to the solem¬ 
nity of his wig; at least, such is the picture given of him by 
the waiting gentlewoman who let him into the chamber of one 
of his lady patients. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


117 


He soon, however, grew tired and impatient of the duties 
and restraints of his profession; his practice was chiefly among 
his friends, and the fees were not sufficient for his maintenance; 
he was disgusted with attendance on sick-chambers and capri¬ 
cious patients, and looked back with longing to his tavern 
haunts and broad convivial meetings, from which the dignity 
and duties of his medical calling restrained him. At length, 
on prescribing to a lady of his acquaintance who, to use a hack¬ 
neyed phrase, “rejoiced” in the aristocratical name of Side- 
botham, a warm dispute arose between him and the apothecary 
as to the quantity of medicine to be administered. The doctor 
stood up for the rights and dignities of his profession, and re¬ 
sented the interference of the compounder of drugs. His rights 
and dignities, however, were disregarded; his wig and cane 
and scarlet roquelaure were of no avail; Mrs. Sidebotham sided 
with the hero of the pestle and mortar; and Goldsmith flung 
out of the house in a passion. “ I am determined henceforth,” 
said he to Topham Beauclerc, “to leave off prescribing for 
friends.” “Ho so, my dear doctor,” was the reply; “when¬ 
ever you undertake to kill, let it be only your enemies.” 

This was the end of Goldsmith’s medical career. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

PUBLICATION OF THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD—OPINIONS CONCERN' 
ING IT—OF DR. JOHNSON—OF ROGERS THE POET—OF GOETHE— 
ITS MERITS—EXQUISITE EXTRACT—ATTACK BY KENRICK—RE¬ 
PLY—BOOK-BUILDING—PROJECT OF A COMEDY. 

The success of the poem of “The Traveller,” and the popu¬ 
larity which it had conferred on its author, now roused the at¬ 
tention of the bookseller in whose hands the novel of “The 
Vicar of Wakefield ” had been slumbering for nearly two long 
years. The idea has generally prevailed that it was Mr. John 
Newbery to whom the manuscript had been sold, and much 
surprise has been expressed that he should be insensible to its 
merit and suffer it to remain unpublished, while putting forth 
various inferior writings by the same author. This, however, 
is a mistake; it was his nephew, Francis Newbery, who had 
become the fortunate purchaser. Still the delay is equally un- 



118 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


accountable. Some have imagined that the uncle and nephew 
had business arrangements together, in which this work was 
included, and that the elder Newbery, dubious of its success, 
retarded the publication until the full harvest of ‘ ‘ The Trav¬ 
eller” should be reaped. Booksellers are prone to make egre¬ 
gious mistakes as to the merit of works in manuscript; and to 
undervalue, if not reject, those of classic and enduring excel¬ 
lence, when destitute of that false brilliancy commonly called 
“ effect.” In the present instance, an intellect vastly superior 
to that of either of the booksellers was equally at fault. Dr. 
Johnson, speaking of the work to Boswell, some time subse¬ 
quent to its publication, observed, “I myself did not think it 
would have had much success. It was written and sold to a 
bookseller before ‘ The Traveller, ’ but published after, so little 
expectation had the bookseller from it. Had it been sold after 
‘The Traveller,’ he might have had twice as much money; 
though sixty guineas was no mean price.” 

Sixty guineas for the Vicar of Wakefield! and this could be 
pronounced no mean price by Dr. Johnson, at that time the 
arbiter of British talent, and who had had an opportunity of 
witnessing the effect of the work upon the public mind; for its 
success was immediate. It came out on the 27th of March, 
1766; before the end of May a second edition was called for; in 
three months more a third; and so it went on, widening in a 
popularity that has never flagged. Rogers, the Nestor of 
British literature, whose refined purity of taste and exquisite 
mental organization, rendered him eminently calculated to 
appreciate a work of the kind, declared that of all the books, 
which, through the fitful changes of three generations he had 
seen rise and fall, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield had 
alone continued as at first; and could he revisit the world after 
an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look 
to find it undiminished. Nor has its celebrity been confined 
to Great Britain. Though so exclusively a picture of British 
scenes and manners, it has been translated into almost every 
language, and everywhere its charm has been the same. 
Goethe, the great genius of Germany, declared in his eighty- 
first year, that it was his delight at the age of twenty, that it 
had in a manner formed a part of his education, influencing his 
taste and feelings throughout life, and that he had recently 
read it again from beginning to end—with renewed delight, and 
with a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it. 

It is needless to expatiate upon the qualities of a work which 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


119 


nas thus passed from country to country, and language to lan¬ 
guage, until it is now known throughout the whole reading 
world, and is become a household book in every hand. The 
secret of its universal and enduring popularity is undoubtedly 
its truth to nature, but to nature of the most amiable kind; to 
nature such as Goldsmith saw it. The author, as we have occa¬ 
sionally shown in the course of this memoir, took his scenes 
and characters in this as in his other writings, from originals 
in his own motley experience; but he has given them as seen 
through the medium of his own indulgent eye, and has set them 
forth with the colorings of his own good head and heart. Yet 
how contradictory it seems that this, one of the most delightful 
pictures of home and homefelt happiness, should be drawn by 
a homeless man; that the most amiable picture of domestic vir¬ 
tue and all the endearments of the married state should be 
drawn by a bachelor, who had been severed from domestic life 
almost from boyhood; that one of the most tender, touching, 
and affecting appeals on behalf of female loveliness should 
have been made by a man whose deficiency in all the graces 
of person and manner seemed to mark him out for a cynical 
disparager of the sex. 

We cannot refrain from transcribing from the work a short 
passage illustrative of what we have said, and which within a 
wonderfully small compass comprises a world of beauty of 
imagery, tenderness of feeling, delicacy and refinement of 
thought, and matchless purity of style. The two stanzas 
which conclude it, in which are told a whole history of a 
woman’s wrongs and sufferings, is, for pathos, simplicity, and 
euphony, a gem in the language. The scene depicted is where 
the poor Vicar is gathering around him the wrecks of his shat¬ 
tered family, and endeavoring to rally them back to happiness. 

“The next morning the sun arose with peculiar warmth for 
the season, so that we agreed to breakfast together on the 
honeysuckle bank; where, while we sat, my youngest daugh¬ 
ter at my request joined her voice to the concert on the trees 
about us. It was in this place my poor Olivia first met her 
seducer, and every object served to recall her sadness. But 
that melancholy which is excited by objects of pleasure, or 
inspired by sounds of harmony, soothes the heart instead of 
corroding it. Her mother, too, upon this occasion, felt a 
pleasing distress, and wept, and loved her daughter as before. 

‘ Do, my pretty Olivia,’ cried she, ‘ let us have that melancholy 
air your father was so fond of; your sister Sophy has already 


120 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 


obliged us. Do, child; it will please your old father.’ Sh<s 
complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic as moved me. 

“ * When lovely woman stoops to folly. 

And finds too late that men betray, 

What charm can soothe her melancholy, 

What art can wash her guilt away? 

«‘ The only art her guilt to cover, 

To hide her shame from every eye, 

To give repentance her lover. 

And wring his bosom—is to die.’ ” 

Scarce had the Vicar of Wakefield made its appearance and 
been received with acclamation, than its author was subjected 
to one of the usual penalties that attend success. He was at¬ 
tacked in the newspapers. In one of the chapters he had in¬ 
troduced his ballad of the Hermit, of which, as we have men¬ 
tioned, a few copies had been printed some considerable time 
previously for the use of the Countess of Northumberland. 
This brought forth the following article in a fashionable jour¬ 
nal of the day. 

“ To the Printer of the St. James's Chronicle. 

“Sir: In the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, published about 
two years ago, is a very beautiful little ballad, called ‘ A Friar 
of Orders Gray.’ The ingenious editor, Mr. Percy, supposes 
that the stanzas sung by Ophelia in the play of Hamlet were 
parts of some ballad well known in Shakespeare’s time, and 
from these stanzas, with the addition of one or two of his own 
to connect them, he had formed the above-mentioned ballad; 
the subject of which is, a lady comes to a convent to inquire 
for her love who had been driven there by her disdain. She 
is answered by a friar that he is dead: 

“ ‘ No, no, he is dead, gone to his death’s be** 

He never will come again.’ 

The lady weeps and laments her cruelty; the friar endeavors 
to comfort her with morality and religion, but all in vain; she 
expresses the deepest grief and the most tender sentiments of 
love, till at last the friar discovers himself: 

“ ‘ And lo! beneath this gown of gra> 

Thy own true love appears.’ 

“This catastrophe is very fine, and the whole, joined with 
the greatest tenderness, has the greatest simplicity; yet, 
though this ballad was so recently published in thu Ancient 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


121 


Beliques, Dr. Goldsmith has been hardy enough to publish a 
poem called ‘ The Hermit,’ where the circumstances and catas¬ 
trophe are exactly the same, only with this difference, that 
the natural simplicity and tenderness of the original are al¬ 
most entirely lost in the languid smoothness and tedious para¬ 
phrase of the copy, which is as short of the merits of Mr. 
Percy’s ballad as the insipidity of negus is to the genuine 
flavor of champagne. 

“ I am, sir, yours, etc., 

“ Detector.” 

This attack, supposed to be by Goldsmith’s constant perse¬ 
cutor, the malignant Kenrick, drew from him the following 
note to the editor: 

“Sir: As there is nothing I dislike so much as newspaper 
controversy, particularly upon trifles, permit me to be as con¬ 
cise as possible in informing a correspondent of yours that I 
recommended Blainville’s travels because I thought the book 
was a good one; and I think so still. I said I was told by the 
bookseller that it was then first published; but in that it seems 
I was misinformed, and my reading was not extensive enough 
to set me right. 

“Another correspondent of yours accuses me of having 
taken a ballad I published some time ago, from one by the in¬ 
genious Mr. Percy. I do not think there is any great resem¬ 
blance between the two pieces in question. If there be any, 
his ballad was taken from mine. I read it to Mr. Percy some 
years ago; and he, as we both considered these things as trifles 
at best, told me, with his usual good-humor, the next time I 
saw him, that he had taken my plan to form the fragments of 
Shakespeare into a ballad of his own. He then read me his 
little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such 
petty anecdotes as these are scarcely worth printing; and 
were it not for the busy disposition of some of your corre¬ 
spondents, the public should never have known that he owes 
me the hint of his ballad, or that I am obliged to his friend¬ 
ship and learning for communications of a much more impor¬ 
tant nature. 

u I am, sir, yours, etc., 

“Oliver Goldsmith.” 

The unexpected circulation of the “ Vicar of Wakefield ” en- 


122 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


riched the publisher, but not the author. Goldsmith no doubt 
thought himself entitled to participate in the profits of the re¬ 
peated editions; and a memorandum, still extant, shows that 
he drew upon Mr. Francis Newbery, in the month of June, for 
fifteen guineas, but that the bill was returned dishonored. He 
continued therefore his usual job-work for the booksellers, 
writing introductions, prefaces, and head and tail pieces for 
new works; revising, touching up, and modifying travels and 
voyages; making compilations of prose and poetry, and 
“ building books,” as he sportively termed it. These tasks re¬ 
quired little labor or talent, but that taste and touch which are 
the magic of gifted minds. His terms began to be propor¬ 
tioned to his celebrity. If his price was at any time objected 
to, “ Why, sir,” he would say, “it may seem large; but then 
a man may be many years working in obscurity before his 
taste and reputation are fixed or estimated; and then he is, as 
in other professions, only paid for his previous labors. ” 

He was, however, prepared to try his fortune in a different 
walk of literature from any he had yet attempted. We have 
repeatedly adverted to his fondness for the drama; he was a 
frequent attendant at the theatres; though, as we have shown, 
he considered them under gross mismanagement. He though^ 
too, that a vicious taste prevailed among those who wrote foi 
the stage. “ A new species of dramatib composition,” says he, 
in one of his essays, “ has been introduced under the name o) 
sentimental comedy , in which the virtues of private life are 
exhibited, rather than the vices exposed; and the distresses 
rather than the faults of mankind make our interest in the 
piece. In these plays almost all the characters are good, and 
exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their tin 
money on the stage; and though they want humor, have 
abundance of sentiment and feeling. If they happen to have 
faults or foibles, the spectator is taught not only to pardon, 
but to applaud them in consideration of the goodness of their 
hearts; so that folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, 
and the comedy aims at touching our passions, without the 
power of being truly pathetic. In this manner we are likely 
to lose one great source of entertainment on the stage; for 
while the comic poet is invading the province of the tragic 
muse, he leaves her lively sister quite neglected. Of this, 
however, he is no ways solicitous, as he measures his fame by 
his profits. . . . 

“ Humor at present seems to be departing from the stage; 


OLIVER GOLD SMI TIT. 


123 


and it will soon happen that our comic players will have noth¬ 
ing left for it but a fine coat and a song. It depends upon the 
audience whether they will actually drive those poor merry 
creatures from the stage, or sit at a play as gloomy as at the 
tabernacle. It is not easy to recover an art when once lost; 
and it will be a just punishment, that when, by our being too 
fastidious, we have banished humor from the stage, we should 
ourselves be deprived of the art of laughing.” 

Symptoms of reform in the drama had recently taken place. 
The comedy of the Clandestine Marriage , the joint production 
of Colman and Garrick, and suggested by Hogarth’s inimitable 
pictures of “Marriage a la mode,” had taken the town by 
storm, crowded the theatres with fashionable audiences, and 
formed one of the leading literary topics of the year. Gold¬ 
smith’s emulation was roused by its success. The comedy was 
in what he considered the legitimate line, totally different from 
the sentimental school; it presented pictures of real life, de¬ 
lineations of character and touches of humor, in which he felt 
himself calculated to excel. The consequence was that in the 
course of this year (1766), he commenced a comedy of the 
same class, to be entitled the Good-Natured Man , at which he 
diligently wrought whenever the hurried occupation of “ book 
building” allowed him leisure. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

SOCIAL POSITION OF GOLDSMITH — HIS COLLOQUIAL CONTESTS 
WITH JOHNSON—ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The social position of Goldsmith had undergone a material 
change since the publication of “ The Traveller.” Before that 
event he was but partially known as the author of some clever 
anonymous writings, and had been a tolerated member of the 
club and the Johnson circle, without much being expected 
from him. Now he had suddenly risen to literary fame, and 
become one of the lions of the day. The highest regions of 
intellectual society were now open to him; but he was not 
prepared to move in them with confidence and success. Bally- 
mahon had not been a good school of manners at the outset of 
life; nor had his experience as a “poor student” at colleges 
and medical schools contributed to give him the polish of 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


124 

society. He had brought from Ireland, as he said, nothing 
but his “brogue and his blunders,” and they had never left 
him. He had travelled, it is true; but the Continental tour 
which in those days gave the finishing grace to the education 
of a patrician youth, had, with poor Goldsmith, been little 
better than a course of literary vagabondizing. It had en¬ 
riched his mind, deepened and widened the benevolence of his 
heart, and filled his memory with enchanting pictures, but it 
had contributed little to disciplining him for the police inter¬ 
course of the world. His life in London had hitherto been a 
struggle with sordid cares and sad humiliations. “You 
scarcely can conceive,” wrote he some time previously to his 
brother, “ how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, 
and study have worn me down.” Several more years had 
since been added to the term during which he had trod the 
lowly wains of life. He had been a tutor, an apothecary’s 
drudge, a petty physician , of the suburbs, a bookseller’s hack, 
drudging for daily bread. Each separate walk had been beset 
by its peculiar thorns and humiliations. It is wonderful how 
his heart retained its gentleness and kindness through all these 
trials; how his mind rose above the “ meannesses of poverty,” 
to which, as he says, he was compelled to submit; but it would 
be still more wonderful, had his manners acquired a tone 
corresponding to the innate grace and refinement of his in¬ 
tellect. He was near forty years of age when he published 
“ The Traveller,” and was lifted by it into celebrity. As is 
beautifully said of him by one of his biographers, “he has 
fought his way to consideration and esteem; but he bears 
upon him the scars of his twelve years’ conflict; of the mean 
sorrows through which he has passed; and of the cheap in¬ 
dulgences he has sought relief and help from. There is noth¬ 
ing plastic in his nature now. His manners and habits are 
sompletely formed; and in them any further success can make 
little favorable change, whatever it may effect for his mind or 
genius.” * 

We are not to be surprised, therefore, at finding him make 
an awkward figure in the elegant drawing-rooms which were 
now open to him, and disappointing those who had formed an 
idea of him from the fascinating ease and gracefulness of his 
poetry. 

Even the literary club, and the circle of which it formed a 


* Forster’s Goldsmith. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


125 


part, after their surprise at the intellectual flights of which he 
showed himself capable, fell into a conventional mode of judg¬ 
ing and talking of him, and of placing him in absurd and 
whimsical points of view. His very celebrity operated here to 
his disadvantage. It brought him into continual comparison 
with Johnson, who was the oracle of that circle and had given 
it a tone. Conversation was the great staple there, and of this 
Johnson was a master. He had been a reader and thinker 
from childhood; his melancholy temperament, which unfitted 
him for the pleasures of youth, had made him so. For many 
years past the vast variety of works he had been obliged to 
consult in preparing his Dictionary, had stored an uncom¬ 
monly retentive memory with facts on all kinds of subjects; 
making it a perfect colloquial armory. “ He had all his life,” 
say/? Boswell, “habituated himself to consider conversation as 
a trial of intellectual vigor and skill. He had disciplined him¬ 
self as a talker as well as a writer, making it a rule to impart 
whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put 
it in, so that by constant practice and never suffering any 
careless expression to escape him, he had attained an extraor¬ 
dinary accuracy and command of language.” 

His common conversation in all companies, 1 according to Sir 
Joshua Beynolds, was - such as to secure him universal atten¬ 
tion, something above the usual colloquial style being always 
expected from him. 

“I do not care,” said Orme, the historian of Hindostan, “on 
what subject Johnson talks; but I love better to hear him talk 
than anybody. He either gives you new thoughts or a new 
coloring. ” 

A stronger and more graphic eulogium is given by Dr. 
Percy. “The conversation of Johnson,” says he, “is strong 
and clear, and may be compared to an antique statue, where 
every vein and muscle is distinct and clear.” 

Such was the colloquial giant with which Goldsmith’s cele¬ 
brity and his habits of intimacy brought him into continual 
comparison; can we wonder that he should appear to dis¬ 
advantage ? Conversation grave, discursive, and disputatious, 
such as Johnson excelled and delighted in, was to him a severe 
task, and he never was good at a task of any kind. He had 
not, like Johnson, a vast fund of acquired facts to draw upon; 
nor a retentive memory to furnish them forth when wanted. 
He could not, like the great lexicographer, mould his ideas 
and balance his periods while talking. He had a flow of ideas, 


126 


OLIVER GOLD SMITH. 


but it was apt to be hurried and confused, and as he said of 
himself, he had contracted a hesitating and disagreeable man¬ 
ner of speaking. He used to say that he always argued best 
when he argued alone; that is to say, he could master a sub¬ 
ject in his study, with his pen in his hand; but, when he came 
into company he grew confused, and was unable to talk about 
it. Johnson made a remark concerning him to somewhat of 
the same purport. “No man,” said he, “is more foolish than 
Goldsmith when he has not a pen in his hand, or more wise 
when he has.” Yet with all this conscious deficiency he w T as 
continually getting involved in colloquial contests with John¬ 
son and other prime talkers of the literary circle. He felt that 
he had become a notoriety; that he had entered the lists and 
was expected to make fight; so with that heedlessness which 
characterized him in everything else he dashed on at a ven¬ 
ture; trusting to chance in this as in other things, and hoping 
occasionally to make a lucky hit. Johnson perceived his hap¬ 
hazard temerity, but gave him no credit for the real diffidence 
which lay at bottom. “The misfortune of Goldsmith in con¬ 
versation,” said he, “is this, he goes on without knowing how 
he is to get off. His genius is great, but his knowledge is 
small. As they say of a generous man, it is a pity he is not 
rich, we may say of Goldsmith it is a pity he is not knowing. 
He would not keep his knowledge to himself.” And, on 
another occasion, he observes: “Goldsmith, rather than not 
talk, will talk of what he knows himself to be ignorant, which 
can only end in exposing him. If in company with two foun¬ 
ders, he would fall a talking on the method of making cannon, 
though both of them would soon see that he did not know 
what metal a cannon is made of.” And again: “Goldsmith 
should not be forever attempting to shine in conversation; he 
has not temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails. 
Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of skill, partly of 
chance; a man may be beat at times by one wffio has not the 
tenth part of his wit. Now Goldsmith, putting himself against 
another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot 
spare the hundred. It is not worth a man’s while. A mau 
should not lay a hundred to one unless he can easily spare it, 
though he has a hundred chances for him; he can get but a 
guinea, r and he may lose a hundred. Goldsmith is in this 
state. When ho contends, if he gets the better, it is a very 
little addition to a man of Iris literary reputation; if he does 
not get the better, he is miserably vexed.” 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


127 


Johnson was not aware how much he was himself to blame 
in producing this vexation, ‘‘ Goldsmith. ” said Miss Reynolds, 
“always appeared to be overawed by Johnson, particularly 
when in company with people of any consequence; always as 
if impressed with fear of disgrace; and indeed well he might. 
I have been witness to many mortifications he has suffered in 
Dr. Johnson’s company.” 

It may not have been disgrace that he feared, but rncteness. 
The great lexicographer, spoiled by the homage of society, was 
still more prone than himself to lose temper when the argu¬ 
ment went against him. He could not brook appearing to be 
worsted; but would attempt to bear down his adversary by 
the rolling thunder of his periods; and when that failed, 
would become downright insulting. Boswell called it “having 
recourse to some sudden mode of robust sophistrybut Gold¬ 
smith designated it much more happily. “ There is no argu¬ 
ing with Johnson,” said he, 11 for when Ms pistol misses fire, he 
knocks you down with the butt end of it.” * 

In several of the intellectual collisions recorded by Boswell 
as triumphs of Dr. Johnson, it really appears to us that Gold¬ 
smith had the best both of the wit and the argument, and 
especially of the courtesy and good-nature. 

On one occasion he certainly gave Johnson a capital reproof 
as to his own colloquial peculiarities. Talking of fables, Gold¬ 
smith observed that the animals introduced in them seldom 
talked in character. “For instance,” said he, “the fable of 
the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envy¬ 
ing them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The 
skill consists in making them talk like little fishes.” Just then 
observing that Dr. Johnson was shaking his sides and laugh¬ 
ing, he immediately added, “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so 
easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes 
talk, they would talk like whales.” 

But though Goldsmith suffered frequent mortifications in so¬ 
ciety from the overbearing, and sometimes harsh, conduct of 
Johnson, he always did justice to his benevolence. When 
royal pensions were granted to Dr. Johnson and Dr. Sheb- 
beare, a punster remarked, that the king had pensioned a she- 


* The following is given by Boswell, as an instance of robust sophistry: “ Once, 
when I was pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus, 1 My 
dear Boswell, let’s have no more of this; you’ll make nothing of it. I’d rather heai 
you whistle a Scotch tune.’ ” 



128 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


bear and a he-bear; to which Goldsmith replied, “Johnson, to 
be sure, has a roughness in his manner, but no man alive has 
a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but the skin .” 

Goldsmith, in conversation, shone most when he least 
thought of shining; when he gave up all effort to appear wise 
and learned, or to cope with the oracular sententiousness of 
Johnson, and gave way to his natural impulses. Even Bos¬ 
well could perceive his merits on these occasions. “For my 
part,” said he, condescendingly, “ I like very well to hear hon¬ 
est Goldsmith talk away carelesslyand many a much wiser 
man than Boswell delighted in those outpourings of a fertile 
fancy and a generous heart. In his happy moods, Goldsmith 
had an artless simplicity and buoyant good-humor, that led to 
a thousand amusing blunders and whimsical confessions, much 
to the entertainment of his intimates; yet, in his most thought¬ 
less garrulity, there was occasionally the gleam of the gold 
and the flash of the diamond. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

SOCIAL RESORTS—THE SHILLING WHIST CLUB—A PRACTICAL JOKE 
—THE WEDNESDAY CLUB —THE “TUN OF MAN” — THE PIG* 
BUTCHER—TOM KING—HUGH KELLY—GLOVER AND HIS CHAR¬ 
ACTERISTICS. 

Though Goldsmith’s pride and ambition led him to mingle 
occasionally with high society, and to engage in the colloquial 
conflicts of the learned circle, in both of which he was ill at 
ease and conscious of being undervalued, yet he had some so¬ 
cial resorts in which he indemnified himself for their restraints 
by indulging his humor without control. One of them was a 
shilling whist club, which held its meetings at the Devil Tav¬ 
ern, near Temple Bar, a place rendered classic, we are told, by 
a club held there in old times, to which “rare Ben Jonson” 
had furnished the rules. The company was of a familiar, un¬ 
ceremonious kind, delighting in that very questionable wit 
which consists in playing off practical jokes upon each other. 
Of one of these Goldsmith was made the butt. Coming to the 
club one night in a hackney coach, he gave the coachman by 
mistake a guinea instead of a shilling, which he set down as a 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


129 


dead loss, for there was no likelihood, he said, that a fellow of 
this class would have the honesty to return the money. On 
the next club evening he was told a person at the street door 
wished to speak with him. He went forth, hut soon returned 
with a radiant countenance. To his surprise and delight the 
coachman had actually brought back the guinea. While he 
launched forth in praise of this unlooked-for piece of honesty 
he declared it ought not to go unrewarded. Collecting a small 
sum from the club, and no doubt increasing it largely from his 
own purse, he dismissed the Jehu with many encomiums on 
his good conduct. He was still chanting his praises^ when one 
of the club requested a sight of the guinea thus honestly re¬ 
turned. To Goldsmith’s confusion it proved to be a counter¬ 
feit. The universal burst of laughter which succeeded, and 
the jokes by which he was assailed on every side, showed him 
that the whole was a hoax, and the pretended coachman as 
much a counterfeit as the guinea. He was so disconcerted, it 
is said, that he soon beat a retreat for the evening. 

Another of those free and easy clubs met on Wednesday 
evenings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street. It was some¬ 
what in the style of the Three Jolly Pigeons; songs, jokes, 
dramatic imitations, burlesque parodies and broad sallies of 
humor, formed a contrast to the sententious morality, pedan¬ 
tic casuistry, and polished sarcasm of the learned circle. Here 
a huge “tun of man,” by the name of Gordon, used to delight 
Goldsmith by singing the jovial song of Nottingham Ale, and 
looking like a butt of it. Here, too, a wealthy pig butcher, 
charmed, no doubt, by the mild philanthropy of “The Trav¬ 
eller, ” aspired to be on the most social footing with the author, 
and here was Tom King, the comedian, recently risen to con- 
■ sequence by his performance of Lord Ogleby in the new com¬ 
edy of the Clandestine Marriage. 

A member of more note was one Hugh Kelly, a second-rate 
author, who, as he became a kind of competitor of Gold¬ 
smith’s, deserves particular mention. He was an Irishman, 
about twenty-eight years of age, originally apprenticed to a 
stay maker in Dublin; then writer to a London attorney; then 
a Grub Street hack, scribbling for magazines and newspapers. 
Of late he had set up for theatrical censor and satirist, and, in 
a paper called Thespis, in emulation of Churchill’s Rosciad, 
had harassed many of the poor actors without mercy, and 
often without wit; but had lavished his incense on Garrick, 
who, in consequence, took him into favor. He was the author 


130 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


of several works of superficial merit, but which had sufficient 
vogue to inflate his vanity. This, however, must have been 
mortified on his first introduction to Johnson; after sittings 
short time he got up to take leave, expressing a fear that a 
longer visit might be troublesome. “Not in the least, sir,” 
said the surly moralist, “I had forgotten you were in the 
room.” Johnson used to speak of him as a man who had 
written more than he had read. 

A prime wag of this club was one of Goldsmith’s poor coun¬ 
trymen and hangers-on, by the name of Glover. He had ori¬ 
ginally beeii educated for the medical profession, but had taken 
in early fife to the stage, though apparently without much suc¬ 
cess. While performing at Cork, he undertook, partly in jest, 
to restore life to the body of a malefactor, who had just been 
executed. To the astonishment of every one, himself among 
the number, he succeeded. The miracle took wind. He aban¬ 
doned the stage, resumed the wig and cane, and considered his 
fortune as secure. Unluckily, there were not many dead peo¬ 
ple to be restored to life in Ireland; his practice did not equal 
his expectation, so he came to London, where he continued to 
dabble indifferently, and rather unprofitably, in physic and 
literature. 

He was a great frequenter of the Globe and Devil taverns, 
where he used to amuse the company by his talent at story¬ 
telling and his powers of mimicry, giving capital imitations of 
Garrick, Foote, Cohnan, Sterne, and other public characters 
of the day. He seldom happened to have money enough to 
pay his reckoning, but was always sure to find some ready 
purse among those who had been amused by his humors. 
Goldsmith, of course, was one of the readiest. It was through 
him that Glover was admitted to the Wednesday Club, of 
which his theatrical imitations became the delight. Glover, 
however, was a little anxious for the dignity of his patron, 
which appeared to him to suffer from the over-familiarity of 
some of the members of the club. He was especially shocked 
by the free and easy tone in which Goldsmith was addressed 
by the pig-butcher: “ Come, Noll,” would he say as he pledged 
him, “ here’s my service to you, old boy!” 

Glover whispered to Goldsmith that he “should not allow 
such liberties.” “Let him alone,” was the reply, “you’ll see 
how civilly I’ll let him down.” After a time, he called out, 
with marked ceremony and politeness, “Mr. R, I have the 
honor of drinking your good health.” Alas! dignity was not 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


131 


poor Goldsmith’s forte: he could keep no one at a distance. 
“Thank’ee, thank’ee, Noll,” nodded the pig-butcher, scarce 
taking the pipe out of his mouth. “I don’t see the effect of 
your reproof,” whispered Glover. “I give it up,” replied 
Goldsmith, with a good-humored shrug, “I ought to have 
known before now there is no putting a pig in the right way.” 

Johnson used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling in 
these motley circles, observing, that, having been originally 
poor, he had contracted a love for low company. Goldsmith, 
however, was guided not by a taste for what was low, but for 
what was comic and characteristic. It was the feeling of the 
artist; the feeling which furnished out some of his best scenes 
in familiar life; the feeling with which “rare Ben Jonson” 
sought these very haunts and circles in days of yore, to study 
“ Every Man in his Humor.” 

It was not always, however, that the humor of these asso¬ 
ciates was to his taste: as they became boisterous in their 
merriment, he was apt to become depressed. 1 ‘ The company 
of fools,” says he, in one of his essays, “ may at first make us 
smile; but at last never fails of making us melancholy.” 
“ Often he would become moody,” says Glover, “and would 
leave the party abruptly to go home and brood over his mis¬ 
fortune.” 

It is possible, however, that he went home for quite a differ¬ 
ent purpose; to commit to paper some scene or passage sug¬ 
gested for his comedy of The Good-Natured Man. The ela¬ 
boration of humor is often a most serious task; and we have 
never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than 
was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer—still, 
we hope, living—whom we found in the agonies of producing 
a farce which subsequently set the theatres in a roar. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE GREAT CHAM OF LITERATURE AND THE KING—SCENE AT SIR 
JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S — GOLDSMITH ACCUSED OF JEALOUSY— 
NEGOTIATIONS WITH GARRICK—THE AUTHOR AND THE ACTOR 
—THEIR CORRESPONDENCE. 

The comedy of The Good-Natured Man was completed by 
Goldsmith early in 1767, and submitted to the^perusal of John- 



132 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


son, Burke, Reynolds, and others of the literary club, by 
whom it was heartily approved. Johnson, who was seldom 
half way either in censure or applause, pronounced it the best 
comedy that had been written since The Pr'ovoked Husband , 
and promised to furnish the prologue. This immediately 
became an object of great solicitude with Goldsmith, knowing 
the weight an introduction from the Great Cham of literature 
would have with the public; but circumstances occurred which 
he feared might drive the comedy and the prologue from 
Johnson’s thoughts. The latter was in the habit of visiting 
the royal library at the Queen’s (Buckingham) House, a noble 
collection of books, in the formation of which he had assisted 
the librarian, Mr. Bernard, with his advice. One evening, as 
he was seated there by the fire reading, he was surprised by 
the entrance of the King (George IIIT), then a young man; who 
sought this occasion to have ' a conversation with him. The 
conversation was varied and discursive; the king shifting from 
subject to subject according to his wont; ‘‘ during the whole 
interview,” says Boswell, “Johnson talked to his majesty 
with profound respect, but still in his open, manly manner, 
with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which 
is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. ‘ I 
found his majesty wished I should talk,’ said he, k and I made 
it my business to talk. I find it does a man good to be talked 
to by his sovereign. In the first place, a man cannot be in a 
passion—’ ” It would have been well for Johnson’s colloquial 
disputants, could he have often been under such decorous 
restraint. He retired from the interview highly gratified with 
the conversation of the King and with his gracious behavior. 
“Sir,” said he to the librarian, “they may talk of the King as 
they will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen.” 
“ Sir,” said he subsequently to Bennet Langton, “his manners 
are those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Lewis the 
Fourteenth or Charles the Second.” 

While Johnson’s face was still radiant with the reflex of 
royalty, he was holding forth one day to a listening group at 
Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, who were anxious to hear every pan 
ticular of this memorable conversation. Among other queS' 
tions, the King had asked him whether he was writing any-, 
thing. His reply was that he thought he had already done his 
part as a writer. “I should have thought so too,” said the 
King, “if you had not written so well.” “No man,” said 
Johnson, commenting on this speech, “could have made a 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


133 


handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a king to pay. It 
was decisive.” “ But did you make no reply to this high com¬ 
pliment?” asked one of the company. “No, sir,” replied the 
profoundly deferential Johnson, “when the King had said it, 
it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my 
. sovereign.” 

During all the time that Johnson was thus holding forth, 
Goldsmith, who was present, appeared to take no interest in 
the royal theme, but remained seated on a sofa at a distance, 
in a moody fit of abstraction; at length recollecting himself, 
he sprang up, and advancing, exclaimed, with what Boswell 
cqlls his usual “frankness and simplicity,” “Well, you ac¬ 
quitted yourself in this conversation better than I should have 
done, for I should have bowed and stammered through the 
whole of it.” He afterward explained Ms seeming inattention, 
by saying that his mind was completely occupied about his 
play, and by fears lest Johnson, in Ms present state of royal 
excitement, would fail to furnish the much-desired prologue. 

How natural and truthful is this explanation. Yet Boswell 
presumes to pronounce Goldsmith’s inattention affected, and 
attributes it to jealousy. “It was strongly suspected,” says 
he, “that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at the singu¬ 
lar honor Dr. Johnson had lately enjoyed.” It needed the 
littleness of mind of Boswell to ascribe such pitiful motives 
to Goldsmith, and to entertain such exaggerated notions of the 
honor paid to Dr. Johnson. 

The Good-Natured Man was now ready for performance, but 
the question was how to get it upon the stage. The affairs of 
Covent Garden, for which it had been intended, were thrown 
in confusion by the recent death of Rich, the manager. Drury 
Lane was under the management of Garrick, but a feud, it 
will be recollected, existed between him and the poet, from the 
animadversions of the latter on the mismanagement of theat- 
I rical affairs, and the refusal of the former to give the poet his 
vote for the secretaryship of the Society of Arts. Times, how¬ 
ever, were changed. Goldsmith when that feud took place 
was an anonymous writer, almost unknown to fame, and of no 
circulation in society. 

' Now he had become a literary lion; he was a member 
of the Literary Club; he was the associate of Johnson, 
Burke, Topham Beauclerc, and other magnates—in a word, 
he had risen to consequence in the public eye, and of course 
was of consequence in the eyes of David Garrick. Sir 


134 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


Joshua Reynolds saw the lurking scruples of pride exist¬ 
ing between the author and actor, and thinking it a pity that 
two men of such congenial talents, and who might be so ser¬ 
viceable to each other, should be kept asunder by a wornout 
pique, exerted his friendly offices to bring them together. The 
meeting took place in Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square.. 
Garrick, however, could not entirely put off the mock majesty 
of the stage; he meant to be civil, but he was rather too gra¬ 
cious and condescending. Tom Davies, in his “Life of Gar¬ 
rick,” gives an amusing picture of the coming together of these 
punctilious parties. “The manager,” says he, “was fully 
conscious of his (Goldsmith’s) merit, and perhaps more osten¬ 
tatious of his abilities to serve a dramatic author than became 
a man of his prudence; Goldsmith was, on his side, as fully 
persuaded of his own importance and independent greatness. 
Mr. Garrick, who had so long been treated with the compli¬ 
mentary language paid to a successful patentee and admired 
actor, expected that the writer would esteem the patronage of 
his play a favor; Goldsmith rejected all ideas of kindness in a 
bargain that was intended to be of mutual advantage to both 
parties, and in this he was certainly justifiable; Mr. Garrick 
could reasonably expect no thanks for the acting a new play, 
which he would have rejected if he had not been convinced it 
would amply,reward bis pains and expense. I believe the 
manager was willing to accept the play, but he wished to 
be courted to it; and the doctor was not disposed to purchase 
his friendship by th6 resignation of his sincerity.” They sepa¬ 
rated, however, with an understanding on the part of Gold¬ 
smith that his play would be acted. The conduct of Garrick 
subsequently proved evasive, not through any fingerings of 
past hostility, but from habitual indecision in matters of the 
kind, and from real scruples of delicacy. He did not think the 
piece likely to succeed on the stage, and avowed that opinion 
to Reynolds and Johnson; but hesitated to say as much to 
Goldsmith, through fear of wounding his feelings. A further 
misunderstanding was the result of this want of decision and 
frankness; repeated interviews and some correspondence took 
place without bringing matters to a point, and in the meantime 
the theatrical season passed away. 

Goldsmith’s pocket, never well supplied, suffered grievously 
by this delay, and he considered himself entitled to call upon 
the manager, who still talked of acting the play, to advance 
him forty pounds upon a note of the younger Newbery. Gar- 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


135 


rick readily complied, but subsequently suggested certain im¬ 
portant alterations in the comedy as indispensable to its 
success; these were indignantly rejected by the author, but 
pertinaciously insisted on by the manager. Garrick proposed 
to leave the matter to the arbitration of Whitehead, the lau¬ 
reate, who officiated as his “reader” and elbow critic. Gold¬ 
smith was more indignant than ever, and a violent dispute 
ensued, which was only calmed by the interference of Burke 
and Reynolds. 

Just at this time order came out of confusion in the affairs of 
Covent Garden. A pique having risen between Colman and 
Garrick, in the course of their joint authorship of The Clandes¬ 
tine Marriage, the former had become manager and part pro¬ 
prietor of Covent Garden, and was preparing to open a power¬ 
ful competition with his former colleague. On hearing of this, 
Goldsmith made overtures to Colman; who, without waiting 
to consult his fellow proprietors, who were absent, gave 
instantly a favorable reply. Goldsmith felt the contrast of this 
warm, encouraging conduct, to the chilling delays and objec¬ 
tions of Garrick. He at once abandoned his piece to the 
discretion of Colman. “Dear sir,” says he in a letter dated 
Temple Garden Court, July 9th, “I am very much obliged to 
you for your kind partiality in my favor, and your tenderness 
in shortening the interval of my expectation. That the play is 
liable to many objections I well know, but I am happy that 
it is in hands the most capable in the world of removing 
them. If then, dear sir, you will complete your favor by put¬ 
ting the piece into such a state as it may be acted, or of direct¬ 
ing me how to do it, I shall ever retain a sense of your goodness 
to me. And indeed, though most probably this be the last I 
shall ever write, yet I can’t help feeling a secret satisfaction 
that poets for the future are likely to have a protector who de¬ 
clines taking advantage of their dreadful situation; and scorns 
that importance which may be acquired by trifling with their 
anxieties.” 

The next day Goldsmith wrote to Garrick, who was at Lich¬ 
field, informing him of his having transferred his piece to 
Covent Garden, for which it had been originally written, and 
by the patentee of which it was claimed, observing, “As I 
found you had very great difficulties about that piece, I com¬ 
plied with his desire. ... I am extremely sorry that you 
should think me warm at our last meeting; your judgment 
certainly ought to be free, especially in a matter which must in 


136 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


some measure concern your own credit and interest. I assure 
you, sir, I have no disposition to differ with you on this or any 
other account, but am, with a high opinion of your abilities, 
and a very real esteem, Sir, your most obedient humble ser¬ 
vant, Oliver Goldsmith.” 

In his reply, Garrick observed, “I was, indeed, much hurt 
that your warmth at our last meeting mistook my sincere and 
friendly attention to your play for the remains of a former 
misunderstanding, which I had as much forgot as if it had 
never existed. What I said to you at my own house I now re¬ 
peat, that I felt more pain in giving my sentiments than you 
possibly would in receiving them. It has been the business, 
and ever will be, of my life to live on the best terms with men 
of genius; and I know that Dr. Goldsmith will have no reason 
to change his previous friendly disposition toward me, as I 
shall be glad of every future opportunity to convince him how 
much I am his obedient servant and well-wisher, D. Garrick.” 


CHAPTER XXI. 

MORE HACK AUTHORSHIP—TOM DAVIES AND THE ROMAN HISTORY 
—CANONBURY CASTLE—POLITICAL AUTHORSHIP—PECUNIARY 
TEMPTATION—DEATH OF NEWBERY THE ELDER. 

Though Goldsmith’s comedy was now in train to be per¬ 
formed, it could not be brought out before Christmas; in the 
meantime, he must live. Again, therefore, he had to resort to 
literary jobs for his daily support. These obtained for him 
petty occasional sums, the largest of which was ten pounds, 
from the elder Newbery, for an historical compilation; but 
this scanty rill of quasi patronage, so sterile in its products, 
was likely soon to cease; Newbery being too ill to attend to 
business, and having to transfer, the whole management of it 
to his nephew. 

At this time Tom Davies, the sometime Roscius, sometime 
bibliopole, stepped forward to Goldsmith’s relief, and proposed 
that he should undertake an easy popular history of Rome in 
two volumes. An arrangement was soon made. Goldsmith 
undertook to complete it in two years, if possible, for two hun¬ 
dred and fifty guineas, and forthwith set about his task with 



OLIVER G OLDS MIT LI. 


137 


cheerful alacrity. As usual, he sought a rural retreat during 
the summer months, where he might alternate his literary 
labors with strolls about the green fields. ‘ ‘ Merry Islington” 
was again his resort, but he now aspired to better quarters 
than formerly, and engaged the chambers occupied occasion¬ 
ally by Mr. Newbery in Canonbury House, or Castle as it is 
popularly called. This had been a hunting lodge of Queen 
Elizabeth, in whose time it was surrounded by parks and for¬ 
ests. In Goldsmith’s day, nothing remained of it but an old 
brick tower; it was still in the country, amid rural scenery, 
and was a favorite nestling-place of authors, publishers, and 
others of the literary order.* A number of these he had for 
fellow occupants of the castle; and they formed a temporary 
club, which held its meetings at the Crown Tavern, on the 
Islington lower road; and here he presided in his own genial 
style, and was the life and delight of the company. 

The writer of these pages visited old Canonbury Castle some 
years since, out of regard to the memory of Goldsmith. The 
apartment was still shown which the poet had inhabited, con¬ 
sisting of a sitting-room and small bedroom, with panelled 
wainscots and Gothic windows. The quaintness and quietude 
of the place were still attractive. It was one of the resorts of 
citizens on their Sunday walks, who would ascend to the top 
of the tower and amuse themselves with reconnoitring the 
city through a telescope. Not far from this tower were the 
gardens of the White Conduit House, a Cockney Elysium, 
where Goldsmith used to figure in the humbler days of his for¬ 
tune. In the first edition of his “ Essays” he speaks of a stroll 
in these gardens, where he at that time, no doubt, thought him¬ 
self in perfectly genteel society. After his rise in the- world, 
however, he became too knowing to speak of such plebeian 
haunts. In a new edition of his “Essays,” therefore, the 
White Conduit House and its garden disappears, and he speaks 
of “a stroll in the Park.” 


* See on the distant slope, majestic shows 
Old Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile 
To various fates assigned; and where by turns 
Meanness and grandeur have alternate reign’d; 
Thither, in latter days, hath genius fled 
From yonder city, to respire and die. 

There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned 
The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. 
There learned Chambers treasured lore for men. 
And Newbery there his A B C’s for babes. 



138 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


While Goldsmith was literally living from hand to mouth 
by the forced drudgery of the pen, his independence of spirit 
was subjected to a sore pecuniary trial. It was the opening of 
Lord North’s administration, a time of great political excite¬ 
ment. The public mind was agitated by the question of Amer¬ 
ican taxation, and other questions of like irritating tendency. 
Junius and Wilkes and other powerful writers were attacking 
the administration with all their force; Grub Street was stirred 
up to its lowest depths; inflammatory talent of all kinds was 
in full activity, and the kingdom was deluged with pamphlets, 
lampoons and libels of the grossest kinds. The ministry were 
looking anxiously round for literary support. It was thought 
that the pen of Goldsmith might be readily enlisted. His hos¬ 
pitable friend and countryman, Robert Nugent, politically 
known as Squire Gawky, had come out strenuously for colo¬ 
nial taxation; had been selected for a lordship of the board of 
trade, and raised to the rank of Baron Nugent and Viscount 
Clare. His example, it was thought, would be enough of 
itself to bring Goldsmith into the ministerial ranks, and then 
what writer of the day was proof against a full purse or a pen¬ 
sion? Accordingly one Parson Scott, chaplain to Lord Sand¬ 
wich, and author of Ante Sejanus Panurge, and other political 
libels in support of the administration, was sent to negotiate 
with the poet, who at this time was returned to town. Dr. 
Scott, in after years, when his political subserviency had been 
rewarded by two fat crown livings, used to make what he con¬ 
sidered a good story out of this embassy to the poet. ‘ ‘ I found 
him,” said he, “ in a miserable suit of chambers in the Temple. 
I told him my authority: I told how I was empowered to pay 
most liberally for his exertions; and, would you believe it! he 
was so absurd as to say, ‘ I can earn as much as will supply my 
wants without writing for any party; the assistance you offer 
is therefore unnecessary to me; ’—and so I left him in his gar¬ 
ret !” Who does not admire the sturdy independence of poor 
Goldsmith toiling in his garret for nine guineas the job, and 
smile with contempt at the indignant wonder of the political 
divine, albeit his subserviency was repaid by two fat crown 
livings? 

Not long after this occurrence, Goldsmith’s old friend, 
though frugal-handed employer, Newbery, of picture-book 
renown, closed his mortal career. The poet has celebrated him 
as the friend of all mankind; he certainly lost nothing by his 
friendship. He coined the brains of his authors in the times of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


189 


their exigency, and made them pay dear for the plank put out 
to keep them from drowning. It is not likely his death caused 
much lamentation among the scribbling tribe'; we may ex¬ 
press decent respect for the memory of the just, but we shed 
tears only at the grave of the generous. 


CHAPTER XXII 

THEATRICAL MANOEUVRING—THE COMEDY OF 11 FALSE DELICACY” 
—FIRST PERFORMANCE OF “ THE GOOD-NATURED MAN”—CON¬ 
DUCT OF JOHNSON—CONDUCT OF THE AUTHOR—INTERMEDDLING 
OF THE PRESS. 

The comedy of The Good-Natured Man was doomed to ex¬ 
perience delays and difficulties to the very last. Garrick, not¬ 
withstanding his professions, had still a lurking grudge against 
the author, and tasked his managerial arts to thwart him in his 
theatrical enterprise. For this purpose he undertook to build, 
up Hugh Kelly, Goldsmith’s boon companion of the Wednes¬ 
day Club, as a kind of rival. Kelly had written a comedy 
called False Delicacy , in which were embodied all the meretri¬ 
cious qualities of the sentimental school. Garrick, though he 
had decried that school, and had brought out his comedy of 
The Clandestine Marriage in opposition to it, now lauded 
False Delicacy to the skies, and prepared to bring it out at 
Drury Lane with all possible stage effect. He even went so 
far as to write a prologue and epilogue for it, and to touch up 
some parts of the dialogue. He had become reconciled to his 
former colleague, Colman, and it is intimated that one condi¬ 
tion in the treaty of peace between these potentates of the 
• realms of pasteboard (equally prone to play into each other’s 
hands with the confederate potentates on the great theatre of 
life) was, that Goldsmith’s play should be kept back until 
Kelly’s had been brought forward. 

In the mean time, the poor author, little dreaming of the 
deleterious influence at work behind the scenes, saw the ap¬ 
pointed time arrive and pass by without the performance of 
his play; while False Delicacy was brought out at Drury Lane 
(January 23, 1768) with all the trickery of managerial manage¬ 
ment. Houses were packed to applaud it to the echo: the 



140 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


newspapers vied with each other in their venal praises, and 
night after night seemed to give it a fresh triumph. 

While False' Delicacy was thus borne on the full tide of fic¬ 
titious prosperity, The Good-Natured Man was creeping through 
the last rehearsals at Covent Garden. The success of the rival 
piece threw a damp upon author, manager, and actors. Gold¬ 
smith went about with a face full of anxiety; Colman’s hopes 
in the piece declined at each rehearsal; as to his fellow pro¬ 
prietors, they declared they had never entertained any. All 
the actors were discontented with their parts, excepting Ned 
fehuter, an excellent low comedian, and a pretty actress named 
Miss Walford; both of whom the poor author ever afterward 
held in grateful recollection. 

Johnson, Goldsmith’s growling monitor and unsparing casti- 
gator in times of heedless levity, stood by him at present with 
that protecting kindness with which he ever befriended him in 
time of need. He attended the rehearsals; he furnished the 
prologue according to promise; he pish’d and pshaw’d at any 
doubts and fears on the part of the author, but gave him sound 
counsel, and held him up with a steadfast and manly hand. 
Inspirited by his sympathy, Goldsmith plucked up new heart, 
and arrayed himself for the grand trial with unusual care. 
Ever since his elevation into the polite world, he had improved 
in his wardrobe and toilet. Johnson could no longer accuse 
him of being shabby in his appearance; he x'ather went to the 
other extreme. On the present occasion there is an entry in 
the books of his tailor, Mr. William Fiiby, of a suit of 
“ Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches, £8 
2s. 7d” Thus magnificently attired, he attended the theatre 
and watched the reception of the play, and the effect of each 
individual scene, with that vicissitude of feeling incident to 
his mercurial nature. 

Johnson’s prologue was solemn in itself, and being delivered 
by Brinsley in lugubrious tones suited to the ghost in Hamlet, 
seemed to throw a portentous gloom on the audience. Some 
of the scenes met with great applause, and at such times Gold¬ 
smith was highly elated; others went off coldly, or there were 
slight tokens of disapprobation, and then his spirits would sink. 
The fourth act saved the piece; for Shuter, who had the main 
comic character of Croaker, was so varied and ludicrous in his 
execution of the scene in which he reads an incendiary letter, 
that he drew down thunders of applause. On his coming be¬ 
hind the scenes, Goldsmith greeted him with an overflowing 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


141 


heart; declaring that he exceeded his own idea of the charac¬ 
ter, and made it almost as new to him as to any of the audi¬ 
ence. 

On the whole, however, both the author and his*friends were 
disappointed at the reception of the piece, and considered it a 
failure. Poor Goldsmith left the theatre with his towering 
hopes completely cut down. He endeavored to hide his morti¬ 
fication, and even to assume an air of unconcern while among 
his associates; but, the moment he was alone with Dr. John¬ 
son, in whose rough but magnanimous nature he reposed un¬ 
limited confidence, he threw off all restraint and gave way to 
an almost childlike burst of grief. Johnson, who had shown 
no want of sympathy at the proper time, saw nothing in the 
partial disappointment of overrated expectations to warrant 
such ungovernpd emotions, and rebuked him sternly for what 
he termed a silly affectation, saying that “No man should be 
expected to sympathize with the sorrows of vanity.” 

When Goldsmith had recovered from the blow, he, with his 
usual unreserve, made his past distress a subject of amusement 
to his friends. Dining, one day, in company with Dr. John¬ 
son, at the chaplain’s table at St. James’s Palace, he enter¬ 
tained the company with a particular and comic account of all 
his feelings on the night of representation, and his despair when 
the piece was hissed. How he went, he said, to the Literary 
Club; chatted gayly, as if nothing had gone amiss; and, to give 
a greater idea of his unconcern, sang his favorite song about 
an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as 
the moon. . . . “ All this while,” added he, “I was suffering 
horrid tortures, and, had I put a bit in my mouth, I verily be¬ 
lieve it would have strangled me on the spot, I was so exces¬ 
sively ill: but I made more noise than usual to cover all that; 
so they never perceived my not eating, nor suspected the an¬ 
guish of my heart; but, when all were gone except Johnson 
here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore that I would never 
write again.” 

Dr. Johnson sat in amaze at the odd frankness and childlike 
self-accusation of poor Goldsmith. When the latter had come 
to a pause, “All this, doctor, ” said he dryly, “I thought had 
been a secret between you and me, and I am sure I would not 
have said anything about it for the world.” But Goldsmith 
had no secrets: his follies, his weaknesses, his errors were all 
thrown to the surface; his heart was really too guileless and 
innocent to seek mystery and concealment. It is too often the 


142 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

false, designing man that is guarded in his conduct and never 
offends proprieties. 

It is singular, however, that Goldsmith, who thus in conver* 
sation could keep nothing to himself, should be the author of a 
maxim which would inculcate the most thorough dissimula¬ 
tion. “Men of the world,” says he, in one of his papers of the 
Bee , “maintain that the true end of speech is not so much to 
express our wants as to conceal them.” How often is this 
quoted as one of the subtle remarks of the fine-witted Talley¬ 
rand ! 

The Good-Natured Man was performed for ten nights in 
succession; the third, sixth, and ninth nights were for the 
author’s benefit; the fifth night it was commanded by their 
majesties; after this it was played occasionally, but rarely, 
having always pleased more in the closet than on the stage. 

As to Kelly’s comedy, Johnson pronounced it entirely devoid 
of character, and it has long since passed into oblivion. Yet 
it is an instance how an inferior production, by dint of puffing 
and trumpeting, may be kept up for a time on the surface of 
popular opinion, or rather of popular talk. What had been 
done for False Delicacy on the stage was continued by the 
press. The booksellers vied with the manager in launching it 
upon the town. They announced that the first impression of 
three thousand copies was exhausted before two o’clock on the 
day of publication; four editions, amounting to ten thousand 
copies, were sold in the course of the season; a public break¬ 
fast was given to Kelly at the Chapter Coffee House, and a 
piece of plate presented to him by the publishers. The com¬ 
parative merits of the two plays were continually subjects of 
discussion in green-rooms, coffee-houses, and other places 
where theatrical questions were discussed. 

Goldsmith’s old enemy, Kenrick, that “viper of the press,” 
endeavored on this as on many other occasions to detract from 
his well-earned fame; the poet was excessively sensitive to 
these attacks, and had not the art and self-command to conceal 
his feelings. 

Some scribblers on the other side insinuated that Kelly had 
seen the manuscript of Goldsmith’s play, while in the hands of 
Garrick or elsewhere, and had borrowed some of the situations 
and sentiments. Some of the wags of the day took a mis¬ 
chievous pleasure in stirring up a feud between the two authors. 
Goldsmith became nettled, though he could scarcely be deemed 
jealous of one so far his inferior. He spoke disparagingly, 


OLIVER GOLD SMITE. 


143 


though no doubt sincerely, of Kelly’s play: the latter retorted. 
Still, when they met one day behind the scenes of Covent 
Garden, Goldsmith, with his customary urbanity, congratu¬ 
lated Kelly on his success. “If I thought you sincere, Mr. 
Goldsmith,” replied the other, abruptly, “I should thank you.” 
Goldsmith w?S not a man to harbor spleen or ill-will, and soon 
laughed at this unworthy rivalship: but the jealousy and envy 
awakened in Kelly’s mind long continued. He is even accused 
of having given vent to his hostility by anonymous attacks in 
the newspapers, the basest resource of dastardly and malig¬ 
nant spirits; but of this there is no positive proof. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS—FINE APARTMENTS—FINE 
FURNITURE — FINE CLOTHES — FINE ACQUAINTANCES — SHOE¬ 
MAKER’S HOLIDAY AND JOLLY PIGEON ASSOCIATES—PETER 
BARLOW, GLOVER, AND THE HAMPSTEAD HOAX—POOR FRIENDS 
AMONG GREAT ACQUAINTANCES. 

The profits resulting from The Good-Natured Mam were be¬ 
yond any that Goldsmith had yet derived from his works. He 
netted about four hundred pounds from the theatre, and one 
Hundred pounds from his publisher. 

Five hundred pounds! and all at one miraculous draught! 
It appeared to him wealth inexhaustible. It at once opened his 
heart and hand, and led him into all kinds of extravagance. 
The first symptom was ten guineas sent to Shuter for a box 
ticket for his benefit, when The Good-Natured Man was to be 
performed. The next was an entire change in his domicile. 
The shabby lodgings with Jeffs the butler, in which he had 
been worried by Johnson’s scrutiny, were now exchanged for 
chambers more becoming a man of his ample fortune. The 
apartments consisted of three rooms on the second floor of No, 
2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, on the right hand ascending the 
staircase, and overlooked the umbrageous walks of the Temple 
garden. The lease he purchased for £400, and then went on to 
furnish his rooms with mahogany sofas, card-tables, and book¬ 
cases; with curtains, mirrors, and Wilton carpets. His awk¬ 
ward little person was also fyirnished out in a style befitting 
his apartment 5 for, in addition to his suit of “ Tyrian bloom. 




144 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


satin grain,” we find another charged about this time, in the 
books of'Mr. Filby, in no less gorgeous terms, being “lined 
with silk and furnished with gold buttons.” Thus lodged and 
thus arrayed, he invited the visits of his most aristocratic ac¬ 
quaintances, and no longer quailed beneath the^ courtly eye of 
Beauclerc. He gave dinners to Johnson, Reynolds, Per 07 , 
Bickerstaff, and other friends of note; and supper parties to 
young folks of both sexes. These last were preceded by round 
games of cards, at which there was more laughter than skill, 
and in which the sport was to cheat each other; or by romping 
games of forfeits and blind-man’s buff, at which he enacted 
the lord of misrule. Blackstone, whose chambers were imme¬ 
diately below, and who was studiously occupied on his “Com¬ 
mentaries,” used to complain of the racket made overhead by 
his revelling neighbor. 

Sometimes Goldsmith would make up a rural party, com¬ 
posed of four or five of his “jolly pigeon” friends, to enjoy 
what he humorously called a “shoemaker’s holiday.” These 
would assemble at his chambers in the morning, to partake of 
a plentiful and rather expensive breakfast; the remains of 
which, with his customary benevolence, he generally gave to 
some poor woman in attendance. The repast ended, the party 
would set out on foot, in high spirits, making extensive ram¬ 
bles by foot-paths and green lanes to Blacklieath, Wandsworth, 
Chelsea, Hampton Court, Highgate, or some other pleasant 
resort, within a few miles of London. A simple but gay and 
heartily relished dinner, at a country, inn, crowned the excur¬ 
sion. In the evening they strolled back to town, all the better 
in health and spirits for a day spent in rural and social enjoy¬ 
ment. Occasionally, when extravagantly inclined, they ad¬ 
journed from dinner to drink tea at the White Conduit House; 
and, now and then, concluded their festive day by supping at 
the Grecian or Temple Exchange Coffee Houses, or at the 
Globe Tavern, in Fleet Street. The whole expenses of the day 
never exceeded a crown, and were oftener from three and six¬ 
pence to four shillings; for the best part of their entertainment, 
sweet air and rural scenes, excellent exercise and joyous con¬ 
versation, cost nothing. 

One of Goldsmith’s humble companions, on these excursions, 
was his occasional amanuensis, Peter Barlow, whose quaint 
peculiarities afforded much amusement to the company. Peter 
was poor but punctilious, squaring his expenses according to 
his means. He always wore the same garb; fixed his regular 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


145 


expenditure for dinner at a trifling sum, which, if left to him¬ 
self, he never exceeded, but which he always insisted on paying. 
His oddities always made him a welcome companion on the 
“shoemaker’s holidays.” The dinner, on these occasions, gem 
erally exceeded considerably his tariff; he put down, however, 
no more than his regular sum, and Goldsmith made up the 
difference. 

1 Another of these hangers-on, for whom, on such occasions, 
he was content to “pay the shot,’’was his countryman, Glover, 
of whom mention has already been made, as one of the wags 
and sponges of the Globe and Devil taverns, and a prime mimic 
at the Wednesday Club. 

This vagabond genius has bequeathed us a whimsical story 
of one of his practical jokes upon Goldsmith, in the course of a 
rural excursion in the vicinity of London. They had dined at 
an inn on Hampstead Heights, and were descending the hill, 
when, in passing a cottage, they saw through the open window 
a party at tea. Goldsmith, who was fatigued, cast a wistful 
glance at the cheerful tea-table. “How I should like to be of 
that party,” exclaimed he. “Nothing more easy,” replied 
Glover, “allow me to introduce you.” So saying, he entered 
the house with an air of the most perfect familiarity, though 
an utter stranger, and was followed by the unsuspecting Gold¬ 
smith, who supposed, of course, that he was a friend of the 
family. The owner of the house rose on the entrance of the 
strangers. The undaunted Glover shook hands with him in 
the most cordial manner possible, fixed his eye on one of the 
company who had a peculiarly good-natured physiognomy, 
muttered something like a recognition, and forthwith launched 
into an amusing story, invented at the moment, of something 
which he pretended had occurred upon the road. The host 
supposed the new-comers were friends of his guests; the guests 
that they w T ere friends of the host. Glover did not give them 
time to find out the truth. He followed one droll story with 
another; brought his powers of mimicry into play, and kept 
the company in a roar. Tea was offered and accepted; an hour 
went off in the most sociable manner imaginable, at the end of 
which Glover bowed himself and his companion out of the 
house with many facetious last words, leaving the host and 
his company to compare notes, and to find out what an im¬ 
pudent intrusion they had experienced. 

Nothing could exceed the dismay and vexation of Goldsmith 
when triumphantly told by Glover that it was all a hoax, and 


146 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


that he did not know a single soul in the house. His first 
impulse was to return instantly and vindicate himself from all 
participation in the jest; but a few words from his free and 
easy companion dissuaded him. “Doctor,” said he, coolly, 

‘ 1 we are unknown; you quite as much as I; if you return and 
tell the story, it will be in the newspapers to-morrow; nay, 
upon recollection, I remember in one of their offices the face of 
that squinting fellow who sat in the comer as if he was trea¬ 
suring up my stories for future use, and we shall be sur of 
being exposed; let us therefore keep our own counsel.” 

This story was frequently afterward told by Glover, with *ich 
dramatic effect, repeating and exaggerating the conversation, 
and mimicking, in ludicrous style, the embarrassment, surprise, 
and subsequent indignation of Goldsmith. 

It is a trite saying that a wheel cannot run in two ruts; nor 
a man keep two opposite sets of intimates. Goldsmith some¬ 
times found his old friends of the “ jolly pigeon” order turning 
up rather awkwardly when he was in company with his new 
aristocratic acquaintances. He gave a whimsical account of 
the sudden apparition of one of them at his gay apartments in 
the Temple, who may have been a welcome visitor at his 
squalid quarters in Green Arbor Court. ‘ ‘ How do you think 
he served me?” said he to a friend. “Why, sir, after staying 
aw r ay two years, he came one evening into my chambers, half 
drunk, as I was taking a glass of wine with Topham Beauclerc 
and General Oglethorpe; and sitting himself down, with most 
intolerable assurance inquired after my health and literary 
pursuits, as if he were upon the most friendly footing. I was 
at first so much ashamed of ever having known such a fellow, 
that I stifled my resentment, and drew him into a conversation 
on such topics as I knew he could talk upon; in which, to do 
him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably; when all of 
a sudden, as if recollecting something, he pulled two papers 
out of his pocket, which he presented to me with great cere¬ 
mony, saying, ‘ Here, my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound 
of tea, and a half pound of sugar, I have brought you; for 
though it is not in my power at present to pay you the two 
guineas you so generously lent me, you, nor any man else, 
shall ever have it to say that I want gratitude.’ This,” added 
Goldsmith, “was too much. I could no longer keep in my 
feelings, but desired him to turn out of my chambers directly; 
which he very coolly did, taking up his tea and sugar; and I 
never saw him afterward.” 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


147 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

REDUCED AGAIN TO BOOK-BUILDING—RURAL RETREAT AT SHOE* 
MAKER’S PARADISE —DEATH OF HENRY GOLDSMITH—TRIBUTES 
TO HIS MEMORY IN “THE DESERTED VILLAGE.” 

The heedless expenses of Goldsmith, as may easily be sup¬ 
posed, soon brought him to the end of his “prize money,” but 
when his purse gave out he drew upon futurity, obtaining 
advances from his booksellers and loans from his friends in the 
confident hope of soon turning up another trump. The debts 
which he thus thoughtlessly incurred in consequence of a 
transient gleam of prosperity embarrassed him for the rest of 
his life; so that the success of the Good-Natured Man may be 
said to have been ruinous to him. 

He was soon obliged to resume his old craft of book-building, 
and set about his History of Rome, undertaken for Davies. 

It was his custom, as we have shown, during the summer 
time, when pressed by a multiplicity of literary jobs, or urged 
to the accomplishment of some particular task, to take country 
lodgings a few miles from town, generally on the Harrow or 
Edge ware roads, and bury himself there for weeks and months 
together. Sometimes he would remain closely occupied in his 
room, at other times he would stroll out along the lanes and 
hedge-rows, and taking out paper and pencil, note down 
thoughts to be expanded and connected at home. His summer 
retreat for the present year, 1768, was a little cottage with a 
garden, pleasantly situated about eight miles from town on the 
Edgeware road. He took it in conjunction with a Mr. Edmund 
Botts, a barrister and man of letters, his neighbor in the Tem¬ 
ple, having rooms immediately opposite him on the same floor. 
They had become cordial intimates, and Botts was one of those 
with whom Goldsmith now and then took the friendly but 
pernicious liberty of borrowing. 

The cottage which they had hired belonged to a rich shoe¬ 
maker of Piccadilly, who had embellished his little domain of 
half an acre with statues and jets, and all the decorations of 
landscape gardening; in consequence of which Goldsmith gave 
it" the name of The Shoemaker’s Paradise. As his fellow- 
occupant, Mr. Botts, drove a gig, he sometimes, in an interval 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


148 

of literary labor, accompanied him to town, partook of a social 
dinner there, and returned with him in the evening. On one 
occasion, when they had probably lingered too long at the 
table, they came near breaking their necks on their way 
homeward by driving against a post on the sidewalk, while 
Botts was proving by the force of legal eloquence that thcj 
were in the very middle of the broad Edgeware road. 

In the course of this summer Goldsmith’s career of gay- 
ety was suddenly brought to a pause by intelligence of the 
death of his brother Henry, then but forty-five years of age. 
He had led a quiet and blameless life amid the scenes of his 
youth, fulfilling the duties of village pastor with unaffected 
piety; conducting the school at Lissoy with a degree of in¬ 
dustry and ability that gave it celebrity, and acquitting him¬ 
self in all the duties of life with undeviating rectitude and the 
mildest benevolence. How truly Goldsmith loved and vener¬ 
ated him is evident in all his letters and throughout his works; 
in which his brother continually forms his model for an ex¬ 
emplification of all the most endearing of the Christian 
virtues; yet his affection at his death was embittered by the 
fear that he died with some doubt upon his mind of the 
warmth of his affection. Goldsmith had been urged by his 
friends in Ireland, since his elevation in the world, to use his 
influence with the great, which they supposed to be all power-- 
ful, in favor of Henry, to obtain for him church preferment. 
He did exert himself as far as his diffident nature would 
permit, but without success; we have seen that, in the case 
of the Earl of Northumberland, when, as Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland, that nobleman proffered him his patronage, he asked 
nothing for himself, but only spoke on behalf of his brother. 
Still some of his friends, ignorant of what he had done and of 
how little he was able to do, accused him of negligence. It is 
not likely, however, that his amiable and estimable brother 
joined in the accusation. 

To the tender and melancholy recollections of his early days 
awakened by the death of this loved companion of his child¬ 
hood, we may attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in 
his “ Deserted Village.” Much of that poem, we are told, was 
composed this summer, in the course of solitary strolls about 
the green lanes and beautifully rural scones of the neighbor¬ 
hood ; and thus much of the softness and sweetness of English 
landscape became blended with the ruder features of Lissoy. 
It was in these lonely and subdued moments, when tender 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


149 


regret was half mingled with self-upbraiding, that he poured 
forth that homage of the heart, rendered as it were at tlio 
grave of his brother. The picture of the village pastor in this 
poem, which, we have already hinted, w r as taken in part from 
the character of his father, embodied likewise the recollections 
of his brother Henry; for the natures of the father and son 
seem to-have been identical. In the following lines, however, 
Goldsmith evidently contrasted the quiet, settled life of his 
brother, passed at home in the benevolent exercise of tho 
Christian duties, with his own restless, vagrant career: 

“ Remote from towns he ran lxis godly race, 

Nor e'er had changed, nor'wished to change his place.” 

To us the whole character seems traced as it were in an expia¬ 
tory spirit; as if, conscious of his own wandering restlessness, 
he sought to humble himself at the shrine of excellence which 
he had not been able to practise: 

“ At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 

His looks adorn'd the venerable place; 

Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 

And fools, who came to scoff, remain’d to pray. 

The service past, around the pious man, 

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; 

Even children follow'd, with endearing wile, 

And pluck’d his gown, to share the good man’s smile: 

His read} r smile a parent's warmth express’d, 

Their welfare pleas’d him. and their cares distress’d; 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 
****** *** 

And as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 

He tried each art, reprov’d each dull delay, 

Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. 


' CHAPTER XXV. 

DINNER AT BICKERSTAFF’S—HIFFERNAN AND HIS IMPECUNIOSITY— 
KENRICK S EPIGRAM — JOHNSON’S CONSOLATION — GOLDSMITH’S 
TOILET—THE BLOOM-COLORED COAT—NEW ACQUAINTANCES—• 
THE HORNECKS—A TOUCH OF POETRY AND PASSION—THE 
JESSAMY BRIDE. 

In October Goldsmith returned to town and resumed his 
usual haunts. We hear of him at a dinner given by his 



150 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


countryman, Isaac Bickerstaff, author of “ Love in a Village, * 
“Lionel and Clarissa,” and other successful dramatic pieces. 
The dinner was to be followed by the reading by Bickerstaff 
of a new play. Among the guests was one Paul Hiffernan, 
likewise an Irishman; somewhat idle and intemperate; who 
lived nobody knew how nor where, sponging wherever he had 
a chance, and often of course upon Goldsmith, who was ever 
the vagabond’s friend, or rather victim. Hiffernan was some¬ 
thing of a physician, and elevated the emptiness of his purse 
into the dignity of a disease, which he termed impecuniosity , 
and against which he claimed a right to call for relief from 
the healthier purses of his friends. He was a" scribbler for the 
newspapers, and latterly a dramatic critic, which had proba¬ 
bly gained him an invitation to the dinner and reading. The 
wine and wassail, however, befogged his senses. Scarce had 
the author got into the second act of his play, when Hiffernan 
began to nod, and at length snored outright. Bickerstaff was 
embarrassed, but continued to read in a more elevated tone. 
The louder he read, the louder Hiffernan snored; until the 
author came to a pause. “Never mind the brute, Bick, but 
go on,” cried Goldsmith. “ He would have served Homer just 
so if he were here and reading his own works.” 

Kenrick, Goldsmith’s old enemy, travestied this anecdote in 
the following lines, pretending that the poet had compared hi* 
countryman Bickerstaff to Homer. 

“ What are your Bretons, Romans, Grecians, 

Compared with thorough-bred Milesians] 

Step into Griffin’s shop, he’ll tell ye 
Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly . . . 

And, take one Irish evidence for t’other, 

E’en Homer’s self is but their foster brother.” 

Johnson was a rough consoler to a man when wincing unde? 
an attack of this kind. “Never mind, sir,” said he to Gold* 
smith, when he saw that he felt the sting. i 4 A man whose 
business it is to be talked of is much helped by being attacked. 
Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock; if it be struck only at one end of 
the room, it will soon fall to the ground; to keep it up, it must 
be struck at both ends.” 

Bickerstaff, at the time of which we are speaking, was in high 
vogue, the associate of the first wits of the day; a few years 
afterward he was obliged to fly the country to escape the 
punishment of an infamous crime. Johnson expressed great 
astonishment at hearing the offence for which he had fled. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


151 


“Why, sir,” said Thrale; “he had long been a suspected man.” 
Perhaps there was a knowing look on the part of the eminent 
brewer, which provoked a somewhat contemptuous reply. 
“By those who look close to the ground,” said Johnson, “ dirt 
will sometimes be seen; I hope I see things from a greater dis¬ 
tance.” 

We have already noticed the improvement, or rather the 
increased expense, of Goldsmith’s wardrobe since his eleva- 
tion into polite society. “He was fond,” says one of his con¬ 
temporaries, “of exhibiting his muscular little person in the 
gayest apparel of the day, to which was added a bag-wig and 
sword. ” Thus arrayed, he used to figure about in the sunshine 
in the Temple Gardens, much to his own satisfaction, but to 
the amusement of his acquaintances. 

JBoswell, in his memoirs, has rendered one of his suits forever 
famous. That worthy, on the lGth of October in the same 
year, gave a dinner to Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, 
Murphy, Bickerstaff, and Davies. Goldsmith was generally 
apt to bustle in at the last moment, when the guests were 
taking their seats at table, but on this occasion he was unusu¬ 
ally early. While waiting for some lingerers to arrive, ‘ ‘ he 
strutted about,” says Boswell, “bragging of his dress, and, I 
believe, was seriously vain of it, for his mind was undoubtedly 
prone to such impressions. ‘ Come, come, ’ said Garrick, ‘ talk 
ho more of that. You are perhaps the worst—eh, eh? ’ Gold¬ 
smith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick 
went on, laughing ironically, ‘ Nay, you will always look like 
a gentleman; but I am talking of your being well or ill dressed. ’ 
‘Well* let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when the tailor 
brought home my bloom-colored coat, he said, “Sir, I have a 
favor to beg of you; when anybody asks you who made your 
clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in 
Water Lane.” ’ ‘ Why, sir,’ cried Johnson, ‘ that was becauso 

he knew the strange color would attract crowds to gaze at it, 
and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could 
make a coat of so absurd a color.’ ” 

But though Goldsmith might permit this raillery on the part 
of his friends, he was quick to resent any personalities of the 
kind from strangers. As he was one day walking the Strand 
in grand array with bag-wig and sword, he excited the merri¬ 
ment of two coxcombs, one of whom called to the other to 
“look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it.” Stung to 
the quick, Goldsmith’s first retort was to caution the passers- 


152 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


by to be on their guard against “that brace of disguised pick 
pockets”—his next was to step into the middle of the street, 
where there was room for action, half draw his sword, and 
beckon the joker, who was armed in like manner, to follow 
him. This was literally a war of wit which the other had not 
anticipated. He had no inclination to push the joke to such 
an extreme, but abandoning the ground, sneaked off with his 
Jbrother wag amid the hootings of the spectators. 

This proneness to finery in dress, however, which Boswell 
and others of Goldsmith’s contemporaries, who did not under¬ 
stand the secret plies of his character, attributed to vanity, 
arose, we are convinced, from a widely different motive. It 
was from a painful idea of his own personal defects, which had 
been cruelly stamped upon his mind in his boyhood by the 
sneers and jeers of his playmates, and had been ground deeper 
into it by rude speeches made to him in every step of his strug¬ 
gling career, until it had become a constant cause of awkward¬ 
ness and embarrassment. This he had experienced the more 
sensibly since his reputation had elevated him into polite 
society; and he was constantly endeavoring by the aid of dress 
to acquire that personal acceptability , if we may use the 
phrase, which nature had denied him. If ever he betrayed a 
little self-complacency on first turning out in a new suit, it may 
perhaps have been because he felt as if he had achieved a tri ¬ 
umph over his ugliness. 

There were circumstances too about the time of which we 
are treating which may have rendered Goldsmith more than 
usually attentive to his personal appearance. He bad recently 
made the acquaintance of a most agreeable family from ^Devon¬ 
shire, which he met at the house of his friend, Sir Joshua Rey¬ 
nolds. It consisted of Mrs. Iiorneck, widow of Captain Kane 
Horneck; two daughters, seventeen and nineteen years of age v 
and an only son, Charles, the Captain in Lace , as his sisters 
playfully and somewhat proudly called him, he having lately 
entered the Guards. The daughters are described as uncom¬ 
monly beautiful, intelligent, sprightly, and agreeable. Cath¬ 
arine, the eldest, went among her friends by the name of 
Little Comedy , indicative, very probably, of her disposition. 
She was engaged to William Henry Bunbury, second son of a 
Suffolk baronet. The hand and heart of her sister Mary wore 
yet unengaged, although she bore the by-name among her 
friends of the Jessamy Bride. This family was prepared, by 
their intimacy with Reynolds and his sister, to appreciate the 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


153 


merits of Goldsmith. The poet had always been a chosen 
friend of the eminent painter, and Miss Reynolds, as we have 
shown, ever since she had heard his poem of “The Traveller” 
read aloud, had ceased to consider him ugly. The Hornecks 
were equally capable of forgetting his person in admiring his 
works. On becoming acquainted with him, too, they were de¬ 
lighted with his guileless simplicity, his buoyant good-nature 
and his innate benevolence, and an enduring intimacy soon 
sprang up between them. For once poor Goldsmith had met 
with polite society with which he was perfectly at home, and 
by which he was fully appreciated; for once he had met with 
lovely women, to whom his ugly features were not repulsive. 
A proof of the easy and playful terms on which he was with 
them remains in a whimsical epistle in verse, of which the fol¬ 
lowing was the occasion. A dinner was to be given to their 
family by a Dr. Baker, a friend of their mother’s, at which 
Reynolds and Angelica Kauffman were to be present. The 
young ladies were eager to have Goldsmith of the party, and 
their intimacy with Dr. Baker allowing them to take the 
liberty, they wrote a joint invitation to the poet at the last 
moment. It came too late, and drew from him the following 
reply; on the top of which was scrawled, “This is a poem! 
This is a copy of verses!” 


Your mandate I got, 

Yon may all go to pot; 

Had your senses been right, 
You'd have sent before night 
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, 
And Baker and his bit, 

And Kauffman beside. 

And the Jessaivy Bride , 

With the rest of the crew, 

The Reynoldses too, 

But alas! your good w 
When both have been 


Little Comedy's face, 

And the Captain in Lace- 
Tall each other to rue 
Your Devonshire crew, 
For sending so late 
To one of my slate. 

But ’tis Reynolds's way 
From wisdom to stray, 
And Angelica’s whim 
To befrolic like him; 
orships, how could they be wiser, 
spoil’d in to-day’s Advertiser? * 


* The following lines had appeared in that day’s Advertiser, on the portrait oS 
Sir Joshua by Angelica Kauffman: 

While fair Angelica, with matchless grace. * 

Paints Conway’s burly form and Stanhope’s face; 

Our hearts to beaut}* willing homage pay. 

We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away. 

But when the likeness she hath done for thee, 

O Reynolds! with astonishment we see, 

Forced to submit, with all our pride we own, 

Such strength, such harmony excelled by none, 

And thou art rivalled by thyself alone. 




154 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


It has been intimated that the intimacy of poor Goldsmith 
with the Miss Hornecks, which began in so sprightly a vein, 
gradually assumed something of a more tender nature, and that 
he was not insensible to the fascinations of the younger sister. 
This may account for some of the phenomena which about 
this tune appeared in his wardrobe and toilet. During the 
first year of his acquaintance with these lovely girls, the tell¬ 
tale book of his tailor, Mr. William Filby, displays entries of 
four or five full suits, beside separate articles of dress. 
Among the items we find a green half-trimmed frock and 
breeches, lined with silk; a queen’s blue dress suit; a half¬ 
dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin; a pair of silk stocking 
breeches, and another pair of a bloom color. Alas! poor 
Goldsmith! how much of this silken finery was dictated, not 
by -vanity, but humble consciousness of thy defects; how 
much of it was to atone for the uncouthness of thy person, 
and to win favor in the eyes of the Jessamy Bride! 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

GOLDSMITH IN THE TEMPLE—JUDGE DAY AND GRATTAN—LABOR 
AND DISSIPATION—PUBLICxVTION OF THE ROMAN HISTORY—’ 
OPINIONS OF IT—HISTORY OF ANIMATED NATURE — TEMPLE 
ROOKERY—ANECDOTES OF A SPIDER. 

In the winter of 1768-69 Goldsmith occupied himself at his 
quarters in the Temple, slowly “building up” his Roman 
History. We have pleasant views of him in this learned and 
half-cloistered retreat of wits and lawyers and legal students, 
in the reminiscences of Judge Day of the Irish Bench, who in 
his advanced age delighted to recall the days of his youth, 
when he was a Templar, and to speak of the kindness with 
which he and his fellow-student, Grattan, were treated by the 
poet. “I was just arrived from college,” said he, “full 
freighted with academic gleanings, and our author did not 
disdain to receive from me some opinions and hints toward his 
Greek and Roman histories. Being then a young man, I felt 
much flattered by the notice of so celebrated a person. He 
took great delight in the conversation of Grattan, whose 
brilliancy in the morning of life furnished full earnest of the 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


155 


unrivalled splendor which awaited his meridian; and finding 
us dwelling together in Essex Court, near himself, where he 
frequently visited my immortal friend, his warm heart 
became naturally prepossessed toward the associate of one 
whom he so much admired.” 

The judge goes on, in his reminiscences, to give a picture of 
Goldsmith’s social habits, similar in style to those already 
furnished. He frequented much the Grecian Coffee-House, 
then the favorite resort of the Irish and Lancashire Templars. 
He delighted in collecting his friends around him at evening 
parties at his chambers, where he entertained them with a 
cordial and unostentatious hospitality. “ Occasionally,” adds 
the judge, “he amused them with his flute, or with whist, 
neither of which he played well, particularly the latter, but, 
on losing his money, he never lost his temper. In a run of 
bad luck and worse play, he would fling his cards upon the 
floor and exclaim, Byefore George, I ought forever to re¬ 
nounce thee, fickle, faithless Fortune.’ ” 

The judge was aware at the time that all the learned labor 
of poor Goldsmith upon his Roman History was mere hack 
work to recruit his exhausted finances. ‘ ‘ His purse replen¬ 
ished,” adds he, “by labors of this kind, the season of relaxa¬ 
tion and pleasure took its turn, in attending the theatres, 
Ranelagh, Vauxhali, and other scenes of gayefcy and amuse¬ 
ment. Whenever his funds were dissipated—and they fled 
more rapidly from being the dupe of many artful persons, 
male and female, who practised upon his benevolence—he 
returned to his literary labors, and shut himself up from 
society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and fresh 
supplies for himself. ” 

How completely had the young student discerned the charac¬ 
teristics of poor, genial, generous, drudging, holiday-loving 
Goldsmith; toiling that he might play; earning his bread by 
“the sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the 
window. 

* The Roman History was published in the middle of May, in 
two volumes of five hundred pages each. It wa£ brought out 
without parade or pretension, and was announced as for the 
use of schools and colleges; but, though a work written for 
bread, not fame, such is its ease, perspicuity, good sense, and 
the delightful simplicity of its style, that it was well received 
by the critics, commanded a prompt and extensive sale, and 
has ever since remained in the hands of young and ©Id. 


156 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or 
dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy of 
the author and the work, in a conversation with Boswell, to 
the great astonishment of the latter. “Whether we take 
Goldsmith,” said he, “as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an 
historian, he stands in the first class.” Boswell.—“An his- 
torian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation 
of the Roman History with the works of other historians of 
this age.” Johnson. —“ Why, who are before him?” Boswell. 
—“Hume—Robertson—Lord Lyttelton.” Johnson (his antip¬ 
athy against the Scotch beginning, to rise).—“I have not read 
Hume; but doubtless Goldsmith’s History is better than the 
verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple.” Boswell. 
—“Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 
history we find such penetration, such painting?” Johnson.— 
“Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that paint¬ 
ing are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He 
who describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robert¬ 
son paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces, in a history-piece; 
he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon 
Robertson’s work as romance, and try it by that standard. 
History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a 
writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. 
Goldsmith has done this in his history. Now Robertson might 
have put twice as much in his book. Robertson is like a man 
who has packed gold in wool; the wool takes up more room 
than the gold. No, sir, I always thought Robertson would be 
crushed with his own weight—would be buried under his own 
ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know; 
Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read 
Robertson’s cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith’s 
plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to 
Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his 
pupils, ‘ Read over your compositions, and whenever you meet- 
with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it 
out!’ Goldsmith’s abridgment is better than that of LuciuS 
Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you 
compare him with Yertot in the same places of the Roman His¬ 
tory, you will find that he excels Yertot. Sir, he has the art 
of compiling, and of saying everything he has to say in a 
pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and 
will make it as entertaining as a Persian tale.” 

The Natural History to which Johnson alluded was the 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


157 

“History of Animated Nature,” which Goldsmith commenced 
in 1769, under an engagement with Griffin, the bookseller, to 
complete it as soon possible in eight volumes, each contain' 
ing upward of four hundred pages, in pica; a hundred guineas 
to be paid to the author on the delivery of each volume in 
j manuscript. 

He was induced to engage in this work by the urgent solici¬ 
tations of the booksellers, who had been struck by the sterling 
merits and captivating style of an introduction which he wrote 
to Brookes’s Natural History. It was Goldsmith’s intention 
originally to make a translation of Pliny, with a popular com¬ 
mentary ; but the appearance of Buffon’s work induced him to 
change his plan, and make use of that author for a guide and 
model. 

Cumberland, speaking, of this work, observes: “Distress 
drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his 
studies nor worthy of his talents. I remember him Avhen, in 
his chambers in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his 
‘ Animated Nature;’ it was with a s^gh, such as genius draws 
when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for 
bread, and talk of birds, and beasts, and creeping things, 
which Pidock’s showman would have done as well. Poor fel¬ 
low, he hardly knows an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a 
goose, but when he sees it on the table.” 

Others of Goldsmith’s friends entertained similar ideas with 
respect to his fitness for the task, and they were apt now and 
then to banter him on the subject, and to amuse themselves 
with his easy credulity. The custom among the natives of 
Otaheite of eating dogs being once mentioned in company, 
Goldsmith observed that a similar custom prevailed in China; 
that a dog-butcher is as common there as any other butcher; 
and that when he walks abroad all the dogs fall on him. John¬ 
son. —‘ ‘ That is not owing to his killing dogs; sir, I remember 
a butcher at Lichfield, whom a dog that was in the house 
where I lived always attacked. It is the smell of carnage 
which provokes this, let the animals he has killed be what 
they may.” Goldsmith.— “Yes, there is a general abhorrence 
in animals at the signs of massacre. If you put a tub full of 
blood into a stable, the horses are likely to go mad.” Johnson. 
—“I doubt that.” Goldsmith.—“Nay, sir, it is a fact well 
authenticated. ” Thrale.—“ You had better prove it before you 
put it into your book on Natural History. You may do it in 
my stable if you will.” Johnson.—“Nay, sir, I would not 


158 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


have him prove it. If he is content to take his information 
from others, he may get through his book with little trouble, 
and without much endangering his reputation. But if he 
makes experiments for so comprehensive a book as his, there 
would be no end to them; his erroneous assertions would fall 
then upon himself; and he might be blamed for not having 
made experiments as to every particular.” 

Johnson’s original prediction, however, with respect to this 
work, that Goldsmith would make it as entertaining as a Per¬ 
sian tale, was verified; and though much of it was borrowed 
from Buff on, and but little of it written from his own observa¬ 
tion ; though it was by no means profound, and was charge¬ 
able with many errors, yet the charms of his style and the play 
of his happy disposition throughout have continued to render 
it far more popular and readable than many works on the sub¬ 
ject of much greater scope and science. Cumberland was mis¬ 
taken, however, in his notion of Goldsmith’s ignorance and 
lack of observation as to the characteristics of animals. On 
the contrary, he was a nAnute and shrewd observer of them; 
but he observed them with the eye of a poet and moralist as 
well as a naturalist. We quote two passages from his works 
illustrative of this fact, and we do so the more readily because 
they are in a manner a part of his history, and give us anothei 
peep into his private life in the Temple; of his mode of occupy¬ 
ing himself in his lonely and apparently idle moments, and of 
another class of acquaintances which he made there. 

Speaking in his “Animated Nature” of the habitudes of 
Rooks, “I have often amused myself,” says he, “ with observ¬ 
ing their plans of policy from my window in the Temple, that 
looks upon 'a grove, where they have made a colony in the 
midst of a city. At the commencement of spring the rookery, 
which, during the continuance of winter, seemed to have been 
deserted, or only guarded by about five or six, like old soldiers 
in a garrison, now begins to be once more frequented; and in a 
short time, all the bustle and hurry of business will be fairly 
commenced.” 

The other passage, which we take the liberty to quote at some 
length, is from an admirable paper in the Bee, and relates to 
the House Spider. 

“Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider 
is the most sagacious, and its motions to me, who have atten¬ 
tively considered them, seem almost to exceed belief. ... I 
perceived, about four years ago, a large spider in one corner of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


15 $ 


my room making its web; and, though the maid frequently 
levelled her broom against the labors of the little animal, I 
had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction, and 
I may say it more than paid me by the entertainment it 
afforded. 

° In three days the web was, with incredible diligence, com¬ 
pleted ; nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to 
exult in its new abode. It frequently traversed it round, 
examined the strength of every part of it, retired into its hole, 
and came out very frequently. The first enemy, however, it 
had to encounter was another and a much larger spider, 
which, having no web of its own, and having probably ex¬ 
hausted all its stock in former labors of this kind, came to 
invade the property of its neighbor. Soon, then, a terrible 
encounter ensued, in which the invader seemed to have the 
victory, and the laborious spider was obliged to take refuge in 
its hole. Upon this I perceived the victor using every art to 
draw the enemy from its stronghold. He seemed to go off, 
but quickly returned; and when he found all arts in vain, 
began to demolish the new web without mercy. This brought 
on another battle, and, contrary to my expectations, the 
laborious spider became conqueror, and fairly killed his an¬ 
tagonist. 

“Now, then, in peaceable possession of what was justly its 
own, it waited three days with the utmost patience, repairing 
the breaches of its web, and taking no sustenance that I could 
perceive. At last, however, a large blue fly fell into the snare, 
and struggled hard to get loose. The spider gave it leave to 
entangle itself as much as possible, but it seemed to be too 
strong for the cobweb. I must own I was greatly surprised 
when I saw the spider immediately sally out, and in less than 
a minute weave a new net round its captive, by which the 
motion of its wings was stopped; and when it was fairly 
hampered in this manner it was seized and dragged into the 
hole. 

“In this manner it lived, in a precarious state; and nature 
seemed to have fitted it for such a life, for upon a single fly it 
subsisted for more than a week. I once put a wasp into the 
net; but when the spider came out in order to seize it, as 
usual, upon perceiving what kind of an enemy it had to deal 
with, it instantly broke all the bands that held it fast, and 
contributed all that lay in its power to disengage so formidable 
an antagonist. When the wasp was set at liberty, I expected 



160 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that 
were made in its net; but those, it seems, were irreparable: 
wherefore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new 
one begun, which was completed in the usual time. 

“ I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider 
could furnish; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set 
about another. When I destroyed the other also, its whole 
stock seemed entirely exhausted, and it could spin no more. 
The arts it made use of to support itself, now deprived of its 
great means of subsistence, were indeed surprising. I have 
seen it roll up its legs like a ball, and lie motionless for hours 
together, but cautiously watching all the time: when a fly 
happened to approach sufficiently near, it would dart out all 
at once, and often seize its prey. 

“Of this life, however, it soon began to grow weary, and 
resolved to invade the possession of some other spider, since it 
could not make a web of its own. It formed an attack upon a 
neighboring fortification with great vigor, and at first was as 
vigorously repulsed. Not daunted, however, with one defeat, 
in this manner it continued to lay siege to another’s web for 
three days, and at length, having killed the defendant, actually 
took possession. When smaller flies happen to fall into the 
snare, the spider does not sally out at once, but very patiently 
waits till it is sure of them; for, upon his immediately ap¬ 
proaching, the terror of his appearance might give the captive 
strength sufficient to get loose; the manner, then, is to wait 
patiently, till, by ineffectual and impotent struggles, the cap¬ 
tive has wasted all its strength, and then he becomes a certain 
and easy conquest. 

“The insect I am now describing lived three years; every 
year it changed its skin and got a new set of legs. I have 
sometimes plucked off a leg, which grew again in two or three 
days. At first it dreaded my approach to its web, but at last 
it became so familiar as to take a fly out of my hand; and, 
upon my touching any part of the web, would immediately 
leave its hole, prepared either for a defence or an attack.” 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


161 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

HONORS AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY—LETTER TO HIS BROTHER 
MAURICE — FAMILY FORTUNES — JANE CONTARINE AND THE 
MINIATURE—PORTRAITS AND ENGRAVINGS—SCHOOL ASSOCIA¬ 
TIONS—JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

The latter part of the year 1768 had been made memorable 
in the world of taste by the institution of the Royal Academy 
of Arts, under the patronage of the King, and the direction of 
forty of the most distinguished artists. Reynolds, who had 
been mainly instrumental in founding it, had been unani¬ 
mously elected president, and had thereupon received the 
honor of knighthood.* Johnson was so delighted with his 
friend’s elevation, that he broke through a rule of total absti¬ 
nence with respect to wine, which he had maintained for 
several years, and drank bumpers on the occasion. Sir Joshua 
eagerly sought to associate his old and valued friends with 
him in his new honors, and it is supposed to be through his 
suggestions that, on the first establishment of professorships, 
which took place in December, 1769, Johnson was nominated 
to that of Ancient Literature, and Goldsmith to that of His¬ 
tory. They were mere honorary titles, without emolumonG, 
but gave distinction, from the noble institution to which they 
appertained. They also gave the possessors honorable places 
at the annual banquet, at which were assembled many of the 
most distinguished persons of rank and talent, all proud to be 
classed among the patrons of the arts. 

The following letter of Goldsmith to his brother alludes to 
the foregoing appointment, and to a small legacy bequeathed 
to him by his uncle Contarine. 


“ To Mr. Maurice Goldsmith , at James Lander's , Esq., at Kih 
more, near Carrick-on-Shannon. 

“January, 1770. 

< < Dear Brother 2 I should have answered your letter sooner, 
but, in truth, I am not fond of thinking of the necessities of 


* Wo must apologize for the anachronism we have permitted ourselves in the 
course of this memoir, in speaking of Reynolds as Sir Joshua, when treating of 
circumstances which occurred prior to his being dubbed; but it is so customary to 
speak of him by that title, that we found it difficult to dispense with it. 





162 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


those I love, when it is so very little in my power to help them. 
I am sorry to find you are every way unprovided for; and 
what adds to my uneasiness is, that I have received a letter 
from my sister Johnson, by which I learn that she is pretty 
much in the same circumstances. As to myself, I believe I think 
I could get both you and my poor brother-in-law something like 
that which you desire, but I am determined never to ask for 
little things, nor exhaust any little interest I may have, until 
I can serve you, him, and myself more effectually. As yet, no 
opportunity has offered; but I believe you are pretty well con¬ 
vinced that I will not be remiss when it arrives. 

“The king has lately been pleased to make me Professor of 
Ancient History in the Royal Academy of Painting which he 
has just established, but there is no salary annexed; and I took 
it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit 
to myself. Honors to one in my situation are something like 
ruffles to one that wants a shirt. 

“You tell me that there are fourteen or fifteen pounds left 
me in the hands of my cousin Lawder, and you ask me what 
I would have done with them. My dear brother, I would by 
no means give any directions to my dear worthy relations at 
Kilmore how to dispose of money which is, properly speaking, 
more theirs than mine. All that I can say is, that I entirely, 
and this letter will serve to witness, give up any right and title 
to u, and I am sure they will dispose of it to the best advan¬ 
tage. To them I entirely leave it; whether they or you may 
think the whole necessary to fit you out, or whether our poor 
sister Johnson may not want the half, I leave entirely to their 
and your discretion. The kindness of that good couple to our 
shattered family demands our sincerest gratitude; and, though 
they have almost forgotten me, yet, if good things at last ar 
rive, I hope one day to return and increase their good-humor 
by adding to my own. 

“I have sent my cousin Jenny a miniature picture of my 
self, as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer. 
I have ordered it to be left for her at George Faulkner’s, folded 
in a letter. The face, you well know, is ugly enough, but it is 
finely painted. I will shortly also send my friends over the 
Shannon some mezzotinto prints of myself, and some more of 
my friends here, such as Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Col- 
man. I believe I have written a hundred letters to different 
fi lends in your country, and never received an answer to any 
of them. I do not know how to account for this, or why they 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 163 

are unwilling to keep up for me those regards which I must 
ever retain for them. 

“If, then, you have a mind to oblige me, you will write 
often, whether I answer you or not. Let me particularly have 
the news of our family and old acquaintances. For instance, 
you may begin by telling me about the family where you re¬ 
side, how they spend their time, and whether they ever make 
mention of me. Tell me about my mother, my brother Hod- 
son and his son, my brother Harry’s son and daughter, my 
sister Johnson, the family of Ballyoughter, what is become of 
them, where they live, and how they do. You talked of being 
my only brother: I don’t understand you. Where is Charles? 
A sheet of paper occasionally filled with the news of this kind 
would make me very happy, and would keep you nearer my 
mind. As it is, my dear brother, believe me to be 
“Yours, most affectionately, 

“Oliver Goldsmith.” 

By this letter we find the Goldsmiths the same shifting, shift¬ 
less race as formerly; a “ shattered family,” scrambling on each 
other’s back as soon as any rise above the surface. Maurice 
is “every way unprovided for;” living upon cousin Jane and 
her husband; and, perhaps, amusing himself by hunting otter 
in the river Inny. Sister Johnson and her husband are as 
poorly off as Maurice, with, perhaps, no one at hand to quar¬ 
ter themselves upon; a 3 to the rest, “what is become of them; 
where do they live; how do they do; what is become of 
Charles?” What forlorn, haphazard life is implied by these 
questions! Can we wonder that, with all the love for his 
native place, which is shown throughout Goldsmith’s writ¬ 
ings, he had not the heart to return there? Yet his affections 
are still there. He wishes to know whether the Lawders 
(which means his cousin Jane, his early Valentine) ever make 
mention of him; he sends Jane his miniature; he believes “it 
is the most acceptable present he can offer;” he evidently, 
therefore, does not believe she has almost forgotten him, 
although he intimates that he does: in his memory she is 
still Jane Contarine, as he last saw her, when he accompanied 
her harpsichord with his flute. Absence, like death, sets a 
seal on the image of those we have loved; we cannot realize 
the intervening changes which time may have effected. 

As to the rest of Goldsmith’s relatives, he abandons his 
legacy of fifteen pounds, to be shared among them. It is all he 


164 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


has to give. His heedless improvidence is eating up the pay 
of the booksellers’ in advance. With all his literary success, 
he has neither money nor influence; but he has empty fame, 
and he is ready to participate with them; he is honorary pro¬ 
fessor, without pay; his portrait is to be engraved in mezzo¬ 
tint, in company with those of his friends, Burke, Reynolds, 
Johnson, Colman, and others, and he will send prints of them 
to his friends over the Channel, though they may not have a 
house to hang them up in. What a motley letter! How indi¬ 
cative of the motley character of the writer! By the by, the 
publication of a splendid mezzotinto engraving of his likeness 
by Reynolds, was a great matter of glorification to Gold¬ 
smith, especially as it appeared in such illustrious company. 
As he was one day walking the streets in a state of high ela¬ 
tion, from having just seen it figuring in the print-shop win¬ 
dows, he met a young gentleman with a newly married wife 
hanging on his arm, whom he immediately recognized for 
Master Bishop, one of the boys he had petted and treated with 
sweetmeats when a humble usher at Milner’s school. The 
kindly feelings of old times revived, and he accosted him with 
cordial familiarity, though the youth may have found some 
difficulty in recognizing in the personage, arrayed, perhaps, in 
garments of Tyrian dye, the dingy pedagogue of the Milners. 
“Come, my boy,” cried Goldsmith, as if still speaking to a 
schoolboy, “ Come, Sam, I am delighted to see you. I must 
treat you to something—what shall it be? Will you have some 
apples?” glancing at an old woman’s stall; then, recollecting 
the print-shop window: “ Sam,” said he, “have you seen my 
picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds? Have you seen it, Sam? 
Have you got an engraving?” Bishop was caught; he equivo¬ 
cated ; he had not yet bought it; but he was furnishing his 
house, and had fixed upon the place where it was to be hung. 
“Ah, Sam!” rejoined Goldsmith reproachfully, “if your pic¬ 
ture had been published, I should not have waited an hour 
without having it.” 

After all, it was honest pride, not vanity, in Goldsmith, that 
was gratified at seeing his portrait deemed worthy of being 
perpetuated by the classic pencil of Reynolds, and “hung up 
in history” beside that of his revered friend, Johnson. Even 
the great moralist himself was not insensible to a feeling ol 
this kind. Walking one day with Goldsmith, in Westminstei 
Abbey, among the tombs of monarchs, warriors, and states¬ 
men, they came to the sculptured mementos of literary won 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


165 


thies in poets’ corner. Casting his eye round upon these me¬ 
morials of genius, Johnson muttered in a low tone to his 
companion, 

Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis. 

Goldsmith treasured up the intimated hope, and shortly after¬ 
ward, as they were passing by Temple bar, where the heads of 
Jacobite rebels, executed for treason, were mouldering aloft on 
spikes, pointed up to the grizzly mementos, and echoed the in¬ 
timation, 

Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

PUBLICATION OF THE ‘‘ DESERTED VILLAGE”—NOTICES AND 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF IT. 

Several years had now elapsed since the publication of 
4 ‘The Traveller,” and much wonder was expressed that the 
great success of that poem had not excited the author to 
further poetic attempts. On being questioned at the annual 
dinner of the Royal Academy by the Earl of Lisburn, why he 
neglected the muses to compile histories and write novels, 
u My Lord,” replied he, “by courting the muses I shall starve, 
but by my other labors I eat, drink, have good clothes, and 
can enjoy the luxuries of life. ” So, also, on being asked by a 
poor writer what was the most profitable mode of exercising 
the pen, “My dear fellow,” replied he, good-humoredly, “pay 
no regard to the draggle-tailed muses; for my part I have 
found productions in prose much more sought after and better 
paid for.” 

Still, however, as we have heretofore shown, he found sweet 
moments of dalliance to steal away from his prosaic toils, and 
court the muse among the green lanes and hedge-rows in the 
rural environs of London, and on the 26th of May, 1770, he 
was enabled to bring his “Deserted Village” before the public. 

The popularity of “The Traveller” had prepared the way 
for this poem, and its sale was instantaneous and immense. 
The first edition was immediately exhausted; in a few days a 
second was issued; in a few days more a third, and by the 



16C 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


16th of August the fifth edition was hurried through the press. 
As is the case with popular writers, he had become his own 
rival, and critics were inclined to give the preference to his 
first poem; but with the public at large we believe the ‘‘De¬ 
serted Village” has ever been the greatest favorite. Previous 
to its publication the bookseller gave him in advance a note 
for the price agreed upon, one hundred guineas. As the latter 
was returning home he met a friend to whom he mentioned 
the circumstance, and who, apparently judging of poetry by 
quantity rather than quality, observed that it was a great sum 
for so small a poem. “ In truth,” said Goldsmith, “I think so 
too; it is much more than the honest man can afford or the 
piece is worth. I have not been easy since I received it.” In 
fact, he actually returned the note to the bookseller, and left 
it to him to graduate the payment according to the success of 
the work. The bookseller, as may well be supposed, soon re¬ 
paid him in full with many acknowledgments of bis disinter¬ 
estedness. This anecdote has been called in question, we 
know not on what grounds; we see nothing in it incompatible 
with the character of Goldsmith, who was very impulsive, 
and prone to acts of inconsiderate generosity. 

As we do not pretend in this summary memoir to go into a 
criticism or analysis of any of Goldsmith’s writings, we shall 
not dwell upon the peculiar merits of this poem; we cannot 
help noticing, however, how truly it is a mirror of the author’s 
heart, and of all the fond pictures of early friends and early life 
forever present there. It seems to us as if the very last ac¬ 
counts received from home, of his “shattered family,” and the 
desolation that seemed to have settled upon the haunts of his 
chilhood, had cut to the roots one feebly cherished hope, and 
produced the following exquisitely tender and mournful lines: 


“In all my wand’rings round this world of care, 

In all my griefs—and God has giv'n my share— 

I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 

Amid these humble bowers to lay me down; 

To husband out life’s taper at the close, 

And keep the flame from wasting by repose; 

I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 

Amid the swains to show my book-learn’d skill. 
Around my fire an ev’ning group to draw, 

And tell of all I felt and all I saw; 

And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew; 
I still had hopes, 1113^ long vexations past, 

Here to return —and die at home at last." 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


167 


How touchingly expressive are the succeeding lines, wrung 
from a heart which all the trials and temptations and budget¬ 
ings of the world could not render worldly; which, amid a 
thousand follies and errors of the head, still retained its child¬ 
like innocence; and which, doomed to struggle on to the last 
amid the din and turmoil of the metropolis, has ever been 
cheating itself with a dream of rural quiet and seclusion: 


Oh bless’d retirement! friend to life’s decline, 
Retreats from care, that never must he mine. 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease; 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly! 

For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep; 
Nor surly porter stands, in guilty state, 

To spurn imploring famine from the gate; 

But on he moves to meet his latter end, 

Angels around befriending virtue’s friend; 

Sinks to'the grave with unperceived decay, 
While resignation gently slopes the way; 

And all his prospects brightening to the last, 

His heaven commences ere the world be past.” 


NOTE. 

The following article, which appeared in a London periodi¬ 
cal, shows the effect of Goldsmith’s poem in renovating the 
fortunes of Lissoy. 

“ About three miles from Ballymahon, a very central town 
in the sister kingdom, is the mansion and village of Auburn, 
so called by their present possessor, Captain Hogan. Through 
the taste and improvement of this gentleman, it is now a beau¬ 
tiful spot, although fifteen years since it presented a very bare 
and unpoetical aspect. This, however, was owing to a cause 
which serves strongly to corroborate the assertion that Gold¬ 
smith had this scene in view when he wrote his poem of ‘ The 
Deserted Village.’ The then possessor, General Napier, turned 
all his tenants out of their farms that he might inclose them in 
his own private domain. Littleton, the mansion of the gen¬ 
eral, stands not far off, a complete emblem of the desolating 
spirit lamented by the poet, dilapidated and converted into a 
barrack. 

“ The chief object of attraction is Lissoy, once the parsonage 
house of Henry Goldsmith, that brother to whom the poet 


168 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


dedicated his ‘Traveller,’ and who is represented as the village 
pastor, 

‘Passing rich with forty pounds a year.’ 

‘ ‘ When I was in the country, the lower chambers were in¬ 
habited by pigs and sheep, and the drawing-rooms by goats. 
Captain Hogan, however, has, I believe, got it since into his 
possession, and has, of course, improved its condition. 

‘ ‘ Though at first strongly inclined to dispute the identity of 
Auburn, Lissoy House overcame my scruples. As I clambered 
over the rotten gate, and crossed the grass-grown lawn or 
court, the tide of association became too strong for casuistry; 
here the poet dwelt and wrote, and here his thoughts fondly 
recurred when composing his ‘ Traveller ’ in a foreign land. 
Yonder was the decent church, that literally ‘ topped the neigh¬ 
boring hill. ’ Before me lay the little hill of Knockrue, on which 
he declares, in one of his letters, he had rather sit with a book 
in hand than mingle in the proudest assemblies. And, above 
all, startlingly true, beneath my feet was 

4 Yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 

And still where many a garden-flower grows wild.’ 

“A painting from the life could not be more exact. ‘The 
stubborn currant-bush ’ lifts its head above the rank grass, and 
the proud hollyhock flaunts where its sisters of the flower-knot 
are no more. 

“In the middle of the village stands the old ‘hawthorn-tree,’ 
built up with masonry to distinguish and preserve it; it is old 
and stunted, and suffers much from the depredations of post- 
chaise travellers, who generally stop to procure a twig. Op¬ 
posite to it is the village alehouse, over the door of which 
swings ‘The Three Jolly Pigeons.’ Within every tiling is ar¬ 
ranged according to the letter: 

‘The whitewash’d wall, the nicely-sanded floor. 

The varnish'd clock that click’d behind the door: 

The chest, contrived a double debt to pay, 

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; 

The pictures placed for ornament and use, 

The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.’ 

“Captain Hogan, I have heard, found great difficulty in ob¬ 
taining ‘ the twelve good rules,’ but at length purchased them 
at some London bookstall to adorn the whitewashed parlor of 
‘The Three Jolly Pigeons.’ However laudable this may be, 
nothing shook my faith in the reality of Auburn so much as 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


169 


this exactness, which had the disagreeable air of being got up 
for the occasion. The last object of pilgrimage is the quondam 
habitation of the schoolmaster, 

‘ There, in his noisy mansion, skill’d to rule.’ 

It is surrounded with fragrant proofs of identity in 

‘ The blossom’d furze, unprofitably gay.’ 

“There is to be seen the chair of the poet, which fell into the 
hands of its present possessors at the wreck of the parsonage- 
house ; they have frequently refused large offers of purchase; 
but more, I dare say, for the sake of drawing contributions 
from the curious than from any reverence for the bard. The 
chair is of oak, with back and seat of cane, which precluded 
all hopes of a secret drawer, like that lately discovered in 
Gay’s. There is no fear of its being worn out by the devout 
earnestness of sitters—as the cocks and hens have usurped un¬ 
disputed possession of it, and protest most clamorously against 
all attempts to get it cleansed or to seat one’s self. 

“The controversy concerning the identity of this Auburn 
was formerly a standing theme of discussion among the 
learned of the neighborhood; but, since the pros and cons 
have been all ascertained, the argument has died away. Its 
abettors plead the singular agreement between the local his¬ 
tory of the place and the Auburn of the poem, and the exact¬ 
ness with which the scenery of the one answers to the descrip¬ 
tion of the other. To this is opposed the mention of the night¬ 
ingale, 

‘ And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made;’ 

there being no such bird in the island. The objection is 
slighted, on the other hand, by considering the passage as a 
mere poetical license. ‘ Besides,’ say they, ‘the robin is the Irish 
nightingale.’ And if it be hinted how unlikely it was that 
Goldsmith should have laid the scene in a place from which 
he was and had been so long absent, the rejoinder is always, 
Pray, sir, was Milton in hell when he built Pandemonium? ’ 

‘ ‘ The line is naturally drawn between; there can be no 
doubt that the poet intended England by 

‘ The land to hast’ning ills a prey, 

Where wealth accumulates and men decay.’ 

But it is very natural to suppose that, at the same time, his 
imagination had in view the scenes of his youth, which give 
such strong features of resemblance to the picture.” 


170 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


Best, an Irish clergyman, told Davis, the traveller in Amer¬ 
ica, that the hawthorn-bush mentioned in the poem was still 
remarkably large. “ I was riding once,” said he, “with Brady, 
titular Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me, ‘ Ma foy, 
Best, this huge overgrown bush is mightily in the way. I will 
order it to be cut down. ’ — ‘ What, sir! ’ replied I, ‘ cut down the 
bush that supplies so beautiful an image in “ The Deserted Vil¬ 
lage”? ‘ Ma foy! ’ exclaimed the bishop, ‘ is that the hawthorn- 
bush? Then let it be sacred from the edge of the axe, and evil 
be to him that should cut off a branch. ’ ”—The hawthorn-bush, 
however, has long since been cut up, root and branch, in fur¬ 
nishing relics to literary pilgrims. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE POET AMONG THE LADIES—DESCRIPTION OF HIS PERSON AND 
MANNERS—EXPEDITION TO PARIS WITH THE HORNECK FAMILY 
—THE TRAVELLER OF TWENTY AND THE TRAVELLER OF FORTY 
—HICKEY, THE SPECIAL ATTORNEY—AN UNLUCKY EXPLOIT. 

The “Deserted Village” had shed an additional poetic grace 
round the homely person of the author; he was becoming more 
and more acceptable in ladies’ eyes, and finding himself more 
and more at ease in their society; at least in the society of 
those whom he met in the Reynolds circle, among whom he 
particularly affected the beautiful family of the Hornecks. 

But let us see what were really the looks and manners of 
Goldsmith about this time, and what right he had to aspire to 
ladies’ smiles; and in so doing let us not take the sketches of 
Boswell and his compeers, who had a propensity to represent 
him in caricature; but let us take the apparently truthful and 
discriminating picture of him as he appeared to Judge Day, 
when the latter was a student in the Temple. 

“In person,” says the judge, “ he was short; about five feet 
five or six inches; strong, but not heavy in make; rather fair 
in complexion, with brown hair; such, at least, as could be dis¬ 
tinguished from his wig. His features were plain, but not re¬ 
pulsive—certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. 
His manners were simple, natural, and perhaps on the whole, 
we may say, not polished; at least without the refinement and 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


17.1 


good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions 
would lead us to expect. He was always cheerful and ani¬ 
mated, often, indeed, boisterous in his mirth; entered with 
spirit into convivial society; contributed largely to its enjoy¬ 
ments by solidity of information, and the nai vete and origi¬ 
nality of his character; talked often without premeditation, 
and laughed loudly without restraint.” 

This, it will be recollected, represents him as he appeared to 
a young Templar, who probably saw him only in Temple coffee¬ 
houses, at students’ quarters, or at the jovial supper parties 
given at the poet’s own chambers; here, of course, his mind 
was in its rough dress; his laugh may have been loud and his 
mirth boisterous; but we trust all these matters became soft¬ 
ened and modified when he found himself in polite drawing¬ 
rooms and in female society. 

But what say the ladies themselves of him ? And here, fortu¬ 
nately, we have another sketch of him, as he appeared at the 
time to one of the Horneck circle; in fact, we believe, to the 
Jessamy Bride herself. After admitting, apparently with 
some reluctance, that “ he was a very plain man,” she goes on 
to say, ‘ k but had he been much more so, it was impossible not 
to love and respect his goodness of heart, which broke out on 
every occasion. His benevolence was unquestionable, and his 
countenance bore every trace of it: no one that knew him inti¬ 
mately could avoid admiring and loving his good qualities.” 
When to all this we add the idea of intellectual delicacy and 
refinement associated with him by his poetry and the newly 
plucked bays that were flourishing round his brow, we can¬ 
not be surprised that fine and fashionable ladies should be 
proud of his attentions, and that even a young beauty should 
not be altogether displeased with the thoughts of having a 
man of his genius in her chains. 

We are led to indulge some notions of the kind from finding 
him in the month of July, but a few weeks after the publica¬ 
tion of the “Deserted Village,” setting off on a six weeks’ ex¬ 
cursion to Paris, in company with Mrs. Horneck and her two 
beautiful daughters. A day or two before his departure, we 
find another new gala suit charged to him on the books of Mr. 
William Filby. Were the bright eyes of the Jessamy Bride 
responsible for this additional extravagance of wardrobe ? 
Goldsmith had recently been editing the works of Parnell; 
had ho taken courage from the example of Edwin in the fairy 
tale?— 


172 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


‘ Yet spite of all that nature did 
To make his uncouth form forbid, 

This creature dared to love. 

He felt the force of Edith’s eyes. 

Nor wanted hope to gain the prize 
Could ladies look within -” 

All this we throw out as mere hints and surmises, leaving it 
to our readers to draw their own conclusions. It will bo 
found, however, that the poet was subjected to shrewd banter¬ 
ing among his contemporaries about the beautiful Mary Hor- 
neck, and that he was extremely sensitive on the subject. 

It was in the month of June that he set out for Paris with 
his fair companions, and the following letter was written by 
him to Sir Joshua Reynolds, soon after the party landed at 
Calais: 

“My dear Friend: We had a very quick passage from 
Dover to Calais, which we performed in three hours and 
twenty minutes, all of us extremely sea-sick, which must 
necessarily have happened, as my machine to prevent sea¬ 
sickness was not completed. We were glad to leave Dover, 
because we bated to be imposed upon: so were in high spirits 
at coming to Calais, where we were told that a little money 
would go a great way. 

“Upon landing, with two little trunks, which was all we 
carried with us, we were surprised to see fourteen or fifteen 
fellows all running down to the ship to lay their hands upon 
them; four got under each trunk, the rest surrounded and 
held' the hasps; and in this manner our little baggage was 
conducted, with a kind of funeral solemnity, till it was safely 
lodged at the custom-house. We were well enough pleased 
with the people’s civility till they came to be paid; every crea¬ 
ture that had the happiness of but touching our trunks with 
their finger expected sixpence; and they had so pretty and 
civil a manner of demanding it, that there was no refusing 
them. 

“ When we had done with the porters, we had next to speak 
with the custom-house officers, who had their pretty civil 
way too. We were directed to the Hotel d’Angleterre, where 
a valet-de-place came to offer his service, and spoke to me ten 
minutes before I once found out that he was speaking English. 
We had no occasion for his services, so we gave him a little 
money because he spoke English, and because he wanted it. I 
cannot help mentioning another circumstance: I bought a new 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH . 173 

ribbon for my wig at Canterbury, and the barber at Calais 
broke it in order to gain sixpence by buying me a new one.” 

An incident which occurred in the course of this tour has 
been tortured by that literary magpie, Boswell, into a proof 
of Goldsmith’s absurd jealousy of any admiration shown to 
others in his presence. While stopping at a hotel in Lisle, 
they were drawn to the windows by a military parade in front. 
The extreme beauty of the Miss Horneeks immediately at¬ 
tracted the attention of the officers, who broke forth with en¬ 
thusiastic speeches and compliments intended for their ears. 
Goldsmith was amused for a while, but at length affected im¬ 
patience at this exclusive admiration of his beautiful compan¬ 
ions, and exclaimed, with mock severity of aspect, ‘ ‘ Elsewhere 
X also would have my admirers.” 

It is difficult to conceive the obtuseness of intellect necessary 
to misconstrue so obvious a piece of mock petulance and dry 
humor into an instance of mortified vanity and jealous self- 
conceit. 

Goldsmith jealous of the admiration of a group of gay offi¬ 
cers for the charms of two beautiful young women! This even 
out-Boswells Boswell; yet this is but one of several similar 
absurdities, evidently misconceptions of Goldsmith’s peculiar 
vein of humor, by which the charge of envious jealousy has 
been attempted to be fixed upon him. In the present instance 
It was contradicted by one of the ladies herself, who was an¬ 
noyed that it had been advanced against him. “I am sure,” 
said she, “from the peculiar manne r of his humor, and as¬ 
sumed frown of countenance, what was often uttered in jest 
was mistaken, by those who did not know him, for earnest.” 
No one was more prone to err on this point than Boswell. He 
had a tolerable perception of wit, but none of humor. 

The following letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds was subse¬ 
quently written: 


“ To Sir Joshua Reynolds. 


“ Paris, July 29 (1770). 

“My dear Friend: I began a long letter to you from Lisle, 
giving a description of all that we had done and seen, but, 
finding it very dull, and knowing that you would show it 
again, I threw it aside and it was lost. You see by the top of 
this letter that we are at Paris, and (as I have often heard you 


174 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


say) we have brought our own amusement with us, for the 
ladies do not seem to be very fond of what we have yet seen. 

“ With regard to myself, I find that travelling at twenty and 
forty are very different things. I set out with all my con¬ 
firmed habits about me, and can find nothing on the Continent 
so good as when I formerly left it. One of our chief amuse¬ 
ments here is scolding at everything we meet with, and prais¬ 
ing everything and every person we left at home. You may 
judge, therefore, whether your name is not frequently ban¬ 
died at table among us. To tell you the truth, I never thought 
I could regret your absence so much as our various mortifica¬ 
tions on the road have taught me to do. I could tell you of 
disasters and adventures without number; of our lying in 
barns, and of my being half poisoned with a dish of green peas; 
of our quarrelling with postilions, and being cheated by our 
landladies; but I reserve all this for a happy hour which I 
expect to share with you upon my return. 

“ I have little to tell you more but that we are at present all 
well, and expert returning when we have stayed out one 
month, which I do not care if it were over this very day. X 
long to hear from you all, how you yourself do, how Johnson, 
Burke, Dyer, Chamber, Colman, and every one of the club do. 
I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter, but X 
protest I am so stupefied by the air of this country (for I am 
sure it cannot be natural) that I have not a word to say. X 
have been thinking of the plot of a comedy, which shall bo 
entitled A Journey to Paris hi which a family shall be inti in¬ 
duced with a full intention of going to France to sa ve money- 
You know there is not a place m the world more promising 
for that purpose. As for the meat of this country, I can 
scarce eat it; and, though we pay t-vc good shillings a head 
for our dinner, I found it all so tough tfiu I have spent less 
time with my knife than my picktooth. X said this as a good 
thing at the table, but it was not understood, I believe it to 
be a good thing. 

“ As for our intended journey to Devonshire J find it out of: 
my power to perform it; for, as soon as I ?rr'vc at Dover,. 
I intend to let the ladies go on, and I will take a. country 
lodging somewhere near that place in order to do som* busi¬ 
ness. I have so outrun the constable that I must mortify j. 
little to bring it up again. For God’s sake, the night you re¬ 
ceive this, take your pen in your hand and tell me something 
about yourself and myself, if you know anything that has 


OLIVER Q OLD SMI TIL 


175 


happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my 
nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to 
Griffin the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for 
me, and be so good as to send them to me at Paris. They may 
perhaps be left for me at the Porter’s Lodge, opposite the 
pump in Temple Lane. The same messenger will do. I ex¬ 
pect one from Lord Clare, from Ireland. As for the others, I 
am not much uneasy about. 

“ Is there anything I can do for you at Paris? I wish you 
would tell me. The whole of my own purchases here is one 
silk coat, which I have put on, and which makes me look like 
a fool. But no more of that. I find that Colman lias gained 
his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. I 
will soon be among you, better phased with my situation at 
home than I ever was before. And yet I must say, that if 
anything could make France pleasant, the very good women 
with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could say 
more about that, but I intend showing them the letter before I 
send it away. What signifies teasing you longer with moral 
observations, when the business of my writing is over? I have 
one thing only more to say, and of that I think every hour in 
the day, namely that I am your most sincere and most af¬ 
fectionate friend, 

“Oliver Goldsmith. 

“ Direct to me at the Hotel de Danemarc, I 
Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains.” f 


A word of comment on this letter: 

Travelling is, indeed, a very different thing with Goldsmith 
the poor student at twenty, and Goldsmith the poet and pro¬ 
fessor at forty. At twenty, though obliged to trudge on foot 
from town to town, and country to country, paying for a supper 
and a bed by a tune on the flute, everything pleased, every¬ 
thing was good; a truckle bed in a garret was a couch cf down, 
and the homely fare of the peasant a feast fit for an epicure. 
Now, at forty, when he posts through the country in a carriage, 
with fair ladies by his side, everything goes wrong: he has to 
quarrel with postilions, he is cheated by landladies, the hotels 
are bams, the meat is too tough to be eaten, and he is half 
poisoned by green peas! A line in his letter explains the secret: 
“the ladies do not seem to be very fond of what we have yet 
seen.” “One of our chief amusements is scolding at every, 
thing we meet with, and praising everything and every person 


176 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


we have left at home!” the true English travelling amusement. 
Poor Goldsmith! he has “all his confirmed habits about him ;’ 1 
that is to say, he has recently risen into high life, and acquired 
high-bred notions; he must be fastidious like his fellow-travel¬ 
lers; he dare not be pleased with what pleased the vulgar 
tastes of his youth. He is unconsciously illustrating the trait 
so humorously satirized by him in Ned Tibbs, the shabby 
beau, who can find “no such dressing as he had at Lord 
Crump’s or Lady Crimp’s;” whose very senses have grown 
genteel, and who no longer “smacks at wretched wine or 
praises detestable custard.” A lurking thorn, too, is worrying 
him throughout this tour; he has “outrun" the constable;” 
that is to say, his expenses have outrun his means, and he 
will have to make up for this butterfly flight by toiling like a 
grub on his return. 

Another circumstance contributes to mar the pleasure he 
had promised himself in this excursion. At Paris the party is 
unexpectedly joined by a Mr. Hickey, a bustling attorney, 
who is well acquainted with that metropolis and its environs, 
and insists on playing the cicerone on all occasions. He and 
Goldsmith do not relish each other, and they have several 
petty altercations. The lawyer is too much a man of business 
and method for the careless poet, and is disposed to manage 
everything. He has perceived Goldsmith’s whimsical pecu¬ 
liarities without properly appreciating his merits, and is prone 
to indulge in broad bantering and raillery at his expense, par¬ 
ticularly irksome if indulged in presence of the ladies. He 
makes himself merry on his return to England, by giving the 
following anecdote as illustrative of Goldsmith’s vanity: 

“Being with a party at Versailles, viewing the waterworks, 
a question arose among the gentlemen present, whether the 
distance from whence they stood to one of the little islands 
was wdthin the compass of a leap. Goldsmith maintained the 
affirmative; but, being bantered on the subject, and remem¬ 
bering his former prowess as a youth, attempted the leap, but, 
falling short, descended into the water, to the great amuse¬ 
ment of the company.” 

Was the Jessamy Bride a witness of this unlucky exploit? 

This same Hickey is the one of whom Goldsmith, some time 
subsequently, gave a good-humored sketch, in his poem of 
“The Retaliation.” 

“ Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature. 

And slander itself must allow him good nature; 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


177 


He cherish’d his friend, and he relish’d a bumper, 

Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. 

Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser; 

I answer No, no, for he always was wiser; 

Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat, 

His very worst foe can’t accuse him of that; 

Perhaps he conilded in men as they go, 

And so was too foolishly honest? Ah, nol 

Then what was his failing? Come, tell it, and bum ye— 

He was, could he help it? a special attorney.” 

One of the few remarks extant made by Goldsmith during 
his tour is the following, of whimsical import, in his “Ani¬ 
mated Nature.” 

“ In going through the towns of France, some time since, I 
could not help observing how much plainer their parrots spoke 
than ours, and how very distinctly I understood their parrots 
speak French, when I could not understand our own, though 
they spoke my native language. I at first ascribed it to the 
different qualities of the two languages, and was for entering 
into an elaborate discussion on the vowels and consonants; but 
a friend that was with me solved the difficulty at once, by as¬ 
suring me that the French women scarce did anything else the 
whole day than sit and instruct their feathered pupils; and 
that the birds were thus distinct in their lessons in consequence 
of continual schooling.” 

His tour does not seem to have left in his memory the 
most fragrant recollections; for, being asked, after his return, 
whether travelling on the Continent repaid ‘ 1 an Englishman 
for the privations and annoyances attendant on it,” he replied, 
“ I recommend it by all means to the sick if they are without 
the sense of smelling , and to the poor if they are without the 
sense of feeling; and to both if they can discharge from their 
minds all idea of what in England we term comfort.” 

It is needless to say that the universal improvement in the 
art of living on the Continent has at the present day taken 
away the force of Goldsmith’s reply, though even at the time 
it was more humorous than correct. 


178 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

DEATH OF GOLDSMITH’S MOTHER—BIOGRAPHY OF PARNELL—- 

AGREEMENT WITH DAVIES FOR THE HISTORY OF ROME—LIFE 

OF BOLINGBROKE—THE HAUNCH OF VENISON. 

On his return to England, Goldsmith received the melan¬ 
choly tidings of the death of his mother. Notwithstanding 
the fame as an author to which he had attained, she seems to 
have been disappointed in her early expectations from him. 
Like others of his family, she had been more vexed by his 
early follies than pleased by his proofs of genius; and in sub¬ 
sequent years, when he had risen to fame and to intercourse 
with the great, had been annoyed at the ignorance of the 
world and want of management, which prevented him from 
pushing his fortune. He had always, however, been an affec¬ 
tionate son, and in the latter years of her life, when she had 
become blind, contributed from his precarious resources to pre¬ 
vent her from feeling want. 

He now resumed the labors of the pen, which his recent ex¬ 
cursion to Paris rendered doubly necessary. We should have 
mentioned a “ Life of Parnell,” published by him shortly after 
the “ Deserted Village.” It was, as usual, a piece of job work, 
hastily got up for pocket-money. Johnson spoke slightingly 
of it, and the author, himself, thought proper to apologize for 
its meagreness; yet, in so doing, used a simile, which for 
beauty of imagery and felicity of language, is enough of itself 
to stamp a value upon the essay. 

“Such,” says he, “is the very unpoetical detail of the life of 
a poet. Some dates and some few facts, scarcely more in¬ 
teresting than those that make the ornaments of a country 
tombstone, are all that remain of one whose labors now begin 
to excite universal curiosity. A poet, while living, is seldom 
an object sufficiently great to attract much attention; his real 
merits are known but to a few, and these are generally sparing 
in their praises. When his fame is increased by time, it is 
then too late to investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; 
the dews of morning are past , and we vainly try to continue the 
chase by the meridian splendor .” 

He now entered into an agreement with Davies to prepare 
an abridgment, in one volume duodecimo, of his History of 
Rome; but first to write a work for which there was a more 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


179 


immediate demand. Davies was about to republish Lord 
Bolingbroke’s ‘ 4 Dissertation on Parties,” which he conceived 
would be exceedingly applicable to the affairs of the day, and 
make a probable hit during the existing state of violent poli¬ 
tical excitement; to give it still greater effect and currency ho 
engaged Goldsmith to introduce it with a prefatory life of Lord 
Bolingbroke. 

About this time Goldsmith’s friend and countryman Lord 
Clare, was in great affliction, caused by the death of his only 
son, Colonel Nugent, and stood in need of the sympathies of a 
kind-hearted friend. At his request, therefore, Goldsmith 
paid him a visit at Ins noble seat of Gosfield, taking his tasks 
with him. Davies was in a worry lest Gosfield Park should 
prove a Capua to the poet, and the time be lost. ‘‘ Dr. Gold¬ 
smith,” writes he to a friend, “ has gone with Lord Clare into 
the country, and I am plagued to get the proofs from him of 
the Life of Lord Bolingbroke.” The proofs, however, were 
furnished in time for the publication of the work in December. 
The Biography, though written during a time of political 
turmoil, and introducing a work intended to be thrown into 
the arena of politics, maintained that freedom from party pre¬ 
judice observable in all the writings of Goldsmith. It was a 
selection of facts drawn from many unreadable sources, and 
arranged into a clear, flowing narrative, illustrative of the 
career and character of one who, as he intimates, “seemed 
formed by nature to take delight in struggling with opposi¬ 
tion ; whose most agreeable hours were passed in storms of his 
own creating; whose life was spent in a continual conflict of 
politics, and as if that was too short for the combat, has left 
his memory as a subject of lasting contention.” The sum 
received by the author for this memoir, is supposed, from 
circumstances, to have been forty pounds. 

Goldsmith did not find the residence among the great unat¬ 
tended with mortifications. He had now become accustomed 
to be regarded in London as a literary lion, and was annoyed, 
at what he considered a slight, on the part of Lord Camden. 
He complained of it on his return to town at a party of his 
friends. “I met him,” said he, “at Lord Clare’s house in the 
country; and he took no more notice of me than if I had been 
an ordinary man.” “ The company,” says Boswell, “ laughed 
heartily at this piece of ‘diverting simplicity.’” And fore¬ 
most among the laughers was doubtless the rattle-pated Bos¬ 
well. Johnson, however,'stepped forward, as usual, to defend 


180 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


the poet, whom he would allow no one to assail hut himself; 
perhaps in the present instance he thought the dignity of 
literature itself involved in the question. “ Nay, gentlemen,” 
roared he, “ Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought 
to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith, and I think it is 
much against Lord Camden that he neglected him.” 

After Goldsmith’s return to town he received from Lord 
Clare a present of game, which he has celebrated and perpetu¬ 
ated in his amusing verses entitled the “ Haunch of Venison.” 
Some of the lines pleasantly set forth the embarrassment 
caused by the appearance of such an aristocratic delicacy in 
the humble kitchen of a poet, accustomed to look up to mutton 
as a treat: 


“ Thanks, my lord, for your venison; for finer or fatter 
Never rang'd in a forest, or smok’d in a platter: 

The haunch was a picture for painters to study, 

The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy; 

Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting, 

To spoil such a delicate picture by eating: 

I had thought in my chambers to place it. in view. 

To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu: 

As in some Irish houses where things are so-so, 

One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show; 

But, for eating a rasher, of what they take pride in, 

They’d as soon think of eating the pan it was fry’d in, 
****** 

But hang it—to poets, who seldom can eat, 

Your very good mutton’s a very good treat; 

Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt; 

It's like sending them ruffles , zohen wanting a shirt." 

We have an amusing anecdote of one of Goldsmith’s blun¬ 
ders which took place on a subsequent visit to Lord Clare’s, 
when that nobleman was residing in Bath. 

Lord Clare and the Duke of Northumberland had houses 
next to each other, of similar architecture. Returning home 
one morning from an early walk, Goldsmith, in one of his fre¬ 
quent fits of absence, mistook the house, and walked up into 
the duke’s dining-room, where he and the duchess were about 
to sit down to breakfast. Goldsmith, still supposing himself 
in the house of Lord Clare, and that they were visitors, made 
them an easy salutation, being acquainted with them, and 
threw himself on a sofa in the lounging manner of a man per¬ 
fectly at home. The duke and duchess soon perceived his 
mistake, and, while they smiled internally, endeavored, with 
the considerateness of well-bred people, to prevent any awk¬ 
ward embarrassment. They accordingly chatted sociably wit^ 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


181 


him about matters in Bath, until, breakfast being served, they 
invited him to partake. The truth at once flashed upon poor 
heedless Goldsmith; he started up from his free-and-easy posi¬ 
tion, made a confused apology for his blunder, and would have 
retired perfectly disconcerted, had not the duke and duchess 
treated the whole as a lucky occurrence to throw him in their 
way, and exacted a promise from him to dine with them. 

This may be hung up as a companion-piece to his blunder on 
his first visit to Northumberland House. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

DINNER AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY—THE ROWLEY CONTROVERSY—• 
HORACE WALPOLE’S CONDUCT TO CHATTERTON—JOHNSON AT 
REDCLIFFE CHURCH — GOLDSMITH’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND — 
DAVIES’S CRITICISM—LETTER TO BENNET LANGTON. 

On St. George’s day of this year (1771), the first annual ban¬ 
quet of the Royal Academy was held in the exhibition room; 
the walls of which were covered with works of art, about to be 
submitted to public inspection. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who first 
suggested this elegant festival, presided in his official character; 
Drs. Johnson and Goldsmith, of course, were present, as pro¬ 
fessors of the academy; and beside the academicians, there was 
a large number of the most distinguished men of the day as 
guests. Goldsmith on this occasion drew on himself the atten¬ 
tion of the company by launching out with enthusiasm on the 
poems recently given to the world by Chatterton as the works 
of an ancient author by the name of Rowley, discovered in the 
tower of Redcliffe Church, at Bristol. Goldsmith spoke of them 
with rapture, as a treasure of old English poetry. This imme¬ 
diately raised the question of their authenticity; they having 
been pronounced a forgery of Chatterton’s. Goldsmith was 
warm for their being genuine. When he considered, he said, 
the merit of the poetry; the acquaintance with life and the 
human heart displayed in them, the antique quaintness of the 
language and the familiar knowledge of historical events of 
their supposed day, he could not believe it possible they could 
be the work of a boy of sixteen, of narrow education, and con¬ 
fined to the duties of an attorney’s office. They must be the 
productions of Rowley. 



182 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


Johnson, who was a stout unbeliever in Rowley, as he had 
been in Ossian, rolled in his chair and laughed at the enthusi¬ 
asm of Goldsmith. Horace Walpole, who sat near by, joined 
in the laugh and jeer as soon as he found that the “ trouvaille ,” 
as he called it, “of his friend Chatterton” was in question. 
This matter, which had excited the simple admiration of Gold¬ 
smith, was no novelty to him, he said. “He might, had he 
pleased, have had the honor of ushering the great discovery to 
the learned world.” And so he might, had he followed his first 
impulse in the matter, for he himself had been an original be¬ 
liever ; had pronounced some specimen verses sent to him by 
Chatterton wonderful for their harmony and spirit; and had 
been ready to print them and publish them to the world with 
his sanction. When he found, however, that his unknown cor¬ 
respondent was a mere boy, humble in sphere and indigent in 
circumstances, and when Gray and Mason pronounced the 
poems forgeries, he had changed his whole conduct toward the 
unfortunate author, and by his neglect and coldness had dashed 
all his sanguine hopes to the ground. 

Exulting in his superior discernment, this cold-hearted man 
of society now went on to divert himself, as he says, with the 
credulity of Goldsmith, whom he was accustomed to pronounce 
“an inspired idiot;” but his mirth was soon dashed, for on ask¬ 
ing the poet what had become of this Chatterton, he was an¬ 
swered, doubtless in the feeling tone of one who had experi¬ 
enced the pangs of despondent genius, that “he had been to 
London and had destroyed himself.” 

The reply struck a pang of self-reproach even to the cold 
heart of Walpole; a faint blush may have visited his cheek at 
his recent levity. “The persons of honor and veracity who 
were present,” said he in after years, when he found it neces¬ 
sary to exculpate himself from the charge of heartless neg¬ 
lect of genius, “will attest with what surprise and concern 
I thus first heard of his death.” Well might he feel concern. 
His cold neglect had doubtless contributed to madden the spirit 
of that youthful genius, and hurry him toward his untimely 
end; nor have all the excuses and palliations of Walpole’s 
friends and admirers been ever able entirely to clear this 
stigma from his fame. 

But what was there in the enthusiasm and credulity of hon¬ 
est Goldsmith in this matter, to subject him to the laugh of 
Johnson or the raillery of Walpole? Granting the poems were 
not ancient, were they not good? Granting they were not the 


OLIVER GOLD SMITH 


383 


productions of Rowley, were they the less admirable for being 
the productions of Chatterton? Johnson himself testified to 
their merits and the genius of their composer when, some years 
afterward, he visited the tower of Redcliffe Church, and was 
shown the coffer in which poor Chatterton had pretended to 
find them. “ This,” said he, “ is the most extraordinary young 
man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how 
the whelp has ivritten such things .” 

As to Goldsmith, he persisted in his credulity, and had sub¬ 
sequently a dispute with Dr. Percy on the subject, which in¬ 
terrupted and almost destroyed their friendship. After all, his 
enthusiasm was of a generous, poetic kind; the poems remain 
beautiful monuments of genius, and it is even now difficult to 
persuade one’s self that they could be entirely the production 
of a youth of sixteen. 

In the month of August was published anonymously the His¬ 
tory of England, on which Goldsmith had been for some time 
employed. It was in four volumes, compiled chiefly, as he ac¬ 
knowledged in the preface, from Rapin, Carte, Smollett, and 
Hume, “each of whom,” says he, “have their admirers, in 
proportion as the reader is studious of political antiquities, 
fond of minute anecdote, a warm partisan, or a deliberate rea- 
soner.” It possessed the same kind of merit as his other his¬ 
torical compilations; a clear, succinct narrative, a simple, easy, 
and graceful style, and an agreeable arrangement of facts; but 
was not remarkable for either depth of observation or minute 
accuracy of research. Many passages were transferred, with 
little if any alteration, from his “Letters from a Nobleman to 
his Son” on the same subject. The work, though written with¬ 
out party feeling, met with sharp animadversions from political 
scribblers. The writer was charged with being unfriendly to 
liberty, disposed to elevate monarchy above its proper sphere; 
a tool of ministers; one who would betray his country for a 
pension. Tom Davies, the publisher, the pompous little bibli¬ 
opole of Russell Street, alarmed lest the book should prove 
unsalable, undertook to protect it by his pen, and wrote a long 
article in its defence in The Public Advertiser. He was vain of 
his critical effusion, and sought by nods and winks and innuen¬ 
does to intimate his authorship. “ Have you seen,” said he in a 
letter to a friend, “ ‘ An Impartial Account of Goldsmith’s His¬ 
tory of England ’ ? If you want to know who was the writer of 
it, you will find him in Russell Street;— but mum!” 

The history, on the whole, however, was well received; some 


184 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


of the critics declared that English history had never before 
been so usefully, so elegantly, and agreeably epitomized, “and, 
like his other historical writings, it has kept its ground ” in 
English literature. 

Goldsmith had intended this summer, in company with Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, to pay a visit to Bennet Langton, at his seat 
in Lincolnshire, where he was settled in domestic life, having 
the year previously married the Countess Dowager of Rothes. 
The following letter, however, dated from his chambers in the 
Temple, on the 7th of September, apologizes for putting off the 
visit, while it gives an amusing account of his summer occu¬ 
pations and of the attacks of the critics on his History of Eng¬ 
land : 

“ My dear Sir: Since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, 
I have been almost wholly in the country, at a farmer’s house, 
quite alone, trying to write a comedy. It is now finished; but 
when or how it will be acted, or whether it will be acted at all, 
are questions I cannot resolve. I am therefore so much em¬ 
ployed upon that, that I am under the necessity of putting off 
my intended visit to Lincolnshire for this season. Reynolds is 
just returned from Paris, and finds himself now in the case of 
a truant that must make up for his idle time by diligence. 
We have therefore agreed to postpone our journey till next 
summer, when we hope to have the honor of waiting upon 
Lady Rothes and you, and staying double the time of our late 
intended visit. We often meet, and never without remember¬ 
ing you. I see Mr. Beauclerc very often both in town and 
* country. He is now going directly forward to become a second 
Boyle; deep in chemistry and physics. Johnson has been down 
on a visit to a country parson, Doctor Taylor; and is returned 
to his old haunts at Mrs. Thrale’s. Burke is a farmer, cn atten¬ 
dant a better place; but visiting about.too. Every soul is 
visiting about and merry but myself. And that is hard too, as 
I have been trying these three months to do something to make 
people laugh. There have I been strolling about the hedges, 
studying jests with a most tragical countenance. The Natural 
History is about half finished, and I will shortly finish the rest. 
God knows I am tired of this kind of finishing, which is but 
bungling work; and that not so much my fault as the fault of 
my scurvy circumstances. They begin to talk in town of the 
Opposition’s gaining ground; the cry of liberty is still as loud 
as ever. I have published, or Davies has published for me. an 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


185 


‘Abridgment of the History of England,’ for which I have 
been a good deal abused in the newspapers, for betraying the 
liberties of the people. God knows I had no thought for or 
against liberty in my head; my whole aim being to make up a 
book of a decent size, that, as ’Squire Richard says, would do no 
harm to nobody. However, they set me down as an arrant 
Tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to 
look at any part of it, you'll say that I am a sore Whig. God 
bless you, and with my most respectful compliments to her 
Ladyship, I remain, dear Sir, your most affectionate humble 
servant, 

“ Oliver Goldsmith.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

MARRIAGE OF LITTLE COMEDY -GOLDSMITH AT BARTON—PRACTI¬ 
CAL JOKES AT THE EXPENSE OF HIS TOILET—AMUSEMENTS AT 

BARTON—AQUATIC MISADVENTURE. 

Though Goldsmith found it impossible to break from his 
literary occupations to visit Bennet Lang ton, in Lincolnshire, 
he soon yielded to attractions from another quarter, in which 
somewhat of sentiment may have mingled. Miss Catherine 
Horneck, one of his beautiful fellow-travellers, otherwise called 
Little Comedy, had been married in August to Henry William 
Bunbury, Esq., a gentleman of fortune, who has become cele¬ 
brated for the humorous productions of his pencil. Goldsmith 
was shortly afterward invited to pay the newly married couple 
a visit at their seat at Barton, in Suffolk. How could he re¬ 
sist such an invitation—especially as the Jessamy Bride would, 
of, course, be among the guests? It is true, he was hampered 
with work; he was still more hampered with debt; his accounts 
with Newbery were perplexed; but all must give way. New 
advances are procured from Newbery, on the promise of a new 
tale in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield, of which he showed 
him a few roughly-sketched chapters; so, his purse replenished 
in the old way, “by hook or by crook,” he posted off to visit 
the bride at Barton. He found there a joyous household, and 
one where he was welcomed with affection. Garrick was 
there, and played the part of master of the revels, for he was 



186 


OLIVER Q OLD SMITH. 


an intimate friend of the master of the house. Notwithstand¬ 
ing early misunderstandings, a social intercourse between the 
actor and the poet had grown up of late, from meeting together 
continually in the same circle. A few particulars have reached 
us concerning Goldsmith while on this happy visit. We be¬ 
lieve the legend has come down from Miss Mary Horneck her¬ 
self. “While at Barton,” she says, “ his manners were always 
playful and amusing, taking the lead in promoting any scheme 
of innocent mirth, and usually prefacing the invitation with 
‘ Come, now, let us play the fool a little. ’ At cards, which was 
commonly a round game, and the stake small, he was always 
the most noisy, affected great eagerness to win, and teased his 
opponents of the gentler sex with continual jest and banter on 
their want of spirit in not risking the hazards of the game. 
But one of his most favorite enjoyments was to romp with the 
children, when he threw off all reserve, and seemed one of the 
most joyous of the group. 

“One of the means by which he amused us was his songs, 
chiefly of the comic kind, which were sung with some taste 
and humor; several, I believe, were of his own composition, 
and I regret that I neither have copies, which might have been 
readily procured from him at the time, nor do I remember their 
names.” 

. His perfect good humor made him the object of tricks of all 
kinds; often in retaliation of some prank which he himself had 
played off. Unluckily these tricks were sometimes made at 
the expense of his toilet, which, with a view peradventure to 
please the eye of a certain fair lady, he had again enriched to 
the impoverishment of his purse. “ Being at all times gay in 
his dress,” says this ladylike legend, “he made his appearance 
at the breakfast-table in a smart black silk coat with an expen¬ 
sive pair of ruffles; the coat some one contrived to soil, and it 
was sent to be cleansed; but, either by accident, or probably 
by design, the day after it came home, the sleeves became 
daubed with paint, which was not discovered until the ruffles 
also, to his great mortification, were irretrievably disfigured. 

“ He always wore a wig, a peculiarity which those who judge 
of his appearance only from the fine poetical head of Reynolds 
would not suspect; and on one occasion some person contrived 
seriously to injure this important adjunct to dress. It was the 
only one he had in the country, and the misfortune seemed ir¬ 
reparable until the services of Mr. Bunbury’s valet were called 
in, who, however, performed his functions so indifferently that 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


187 

poor Goldsmith’s appearance became the signal for a general 
smile. ” 

This was wicked waggery, especially when it was directed to 
mar all the attempts of the unfortunate poet to improve his 
personal appearance, about which he was at all times dubiously 
sensitive, and particularly when among the ladies. 

We have in a former chapter recorded his unlucky tumble 
into a fountain at Versailles, when attempting a feat of agility 
in presence of the fair Hornecks. Water was destined to be 
equally baneful to him on the present occasion. “Some differ¬ 
ence of opinion,” says the fair narrator, “ having arisen with 
Lord Harrington respecting the depth of a pond, the poet re¬ 
marked that it was not so deep but that, if anything valuable 
was to be found at the bottom, he would not hesitate to pick it 
up. His \ ordship, after some banter, threw in a guinea; Gold¬ 
smith, not to be outdone in this kind of bravado, in attempting 
to fulfil his promise without getting wet, accidentally fell in, 
to the amusement of all present, but persevered, brought out 
the money, and kept it, remarking that he had abundant ob¬ 
jects on whom to bestow any farther proofs of his lordship’s 
whim or bounty. ” 

All this is recorded by the beautiful Mary Horneck, the Jes- 
samy Bride herself; but while she gives these amusing pictures 
of poor Goldsmith’s eccentricities, and of the mischievous 
pranks played off upon him, she bears unqualified testimony, 
which we have quoted elsewhere, to the qualities of his head 
and heart, whioh shone forth in his countenance, and gained 
him the love of all who knew him. 

Among the circumstances of this visit vaguely called to mind 
by this fair lady in after years, was that Goldsmith read to her 
and her sister the first part of a novel which he had in hand. 
It was doubtless the manuscript mentioned at the beginning of 
this chapter, on which he had obtained an advance of money 
from Newbery to stave off some pressing debts, and to provide 
funds for this very visit. It never was finished. The book¬ 
seller, when he came afterward to examine the manuscript, 
objected to it as a mere narrative version of the Good-Natured 
Man. Goldsmith, too easily put out of conceit of his writings, 
threw it aside, forgetting that this was the very Newbery who 
kept his Vicar of Wakefield by him nearly two years through 
doubts of its success. The loss of the manuscript is deeply to 
be regretted; it doubtless would have been properly wrought 
up before given to the press, and might have given us new 


188 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


scenes in life and traits of character, while it could not fail to 
bear traces of his delightful style. What a pity he had not 
been guided by the opinions of his fair listeners at Barton, 
instead of that of the astute Mr. Newbery! 


CHAPTEK XXXIII. 

DINNER AT GENERAL OGLETHORPE’S—ANECDOTES OF THB GEN' 
ERAL—DISPUTE ABOUT DUELLING—GHOST STORIES. 

We have mentioned old General Oglethorpe as one of Gold¬ 
smith’s aristocratical acquaintances. This veteran, born in 
1698, had commenced life early, by serving, when a mere strip¬ 
ling, under Prince Eugene, against the Turks. He had con¬ 
tinued in military life, and been promoted to the rank of major- 
general in 1745, and received a command during the Scottish 
rebellion. Being of strong Jacobite tendencies, he was suspected 
and accused of favoring the rebels; and though acquitted by a 
court of inquiry, was never afterward employed; or, in technl 
cal language, was shelved. He had since been repeatedly a 
member of parliament, and had always distinguished himself 
by learning, taste, active benevolence, and high Tory principles. 
His name, however, has become historical, chiefly from his 
transactions in America, and the share he took in the settle¬ 
ment of the colony of Georgia. It lies enbalmed in honorable 
immortality in a single line of Pope’s: 

“ One, driven by strong benevolence of soul, 

Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.” 

The veteran was now seventy-four years of age, but healthy 
and vigorous, and as much the preux chevalier as in his 
younger days, when he served with Prince Eugene. His table 
was often the gathering-place of men of talent. Johnson was 
frequently there, and delighted in drawing from the genera! 
details of his various “ experiences.” He was anxious that he 
should give the world his life. “ I know no man,” said he, 
“whose life would be more interesting.” §till the vivacity of 
the general’s mind and the variety of his knowledge made him 
skip from subject to subject too fast for the Lexicographer. 
“ Oglethorpe,” growled he, “never completes what he ha* to 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


189 


Boswell gives us an interesting and characteristic account of 
a dinner party at the general’s (April 10th, 1772), at which 
Goldsmith and Johnson were present. After dinner, when the 
cloth was removed, Oglethorpe, at Johnson’s request, gave an 
account of the siege of Belgrade, in the true veteran style. 
Pouring a little wine upon the table, he drew his lines and par¬ 
allels with a wet finger, describing the positions of the opposing 
forces. “Here were we—here were the Turks,” to all which 
Johnson listened with the most earnest attention, poring over 
the plans and diagrams with his usual purblind closeness. 

In the course of conversation, the general gave an anecdote 
of himself in early life, when serving under Prince Eugene. 
Sitting at table once in company with a prince of Wurtem- 
berg, the latter gave a fillip to a glass of wine, so as to make 
some of it fly in Oglethorpe’s face. The manner in which it 
was done was somewhat equivocal. How was it to be taken 
by the stripling officer? If seriously, he must challenge the 
prince; but in so doing he might fix on himself the character 
of a drawcansir. If passed over without notice, he might be 
charged with cowardice. His mind was made up in an in¬ 
stant. “ Prince,” said he, smiling, “that is an excellent joke; 
but we do it much better in England.” So saying, he threw a 
whole glass of wine in the prince’s face. “II a bien fait, mon 
prince,” cried an old general present, “ vous l’avez commence.” 
(He has done right, my prince; you commenced it.) The 
prince had the good sense to acquiesce in the decision of the 
veteran, and Oglethorpe’s retort in kind was taken in good 
part. 

It was probably at the close of this story that the officious 
Boswell, ever anxious to promote conversation for the benefit 
of his note-book, started the question whether duelling were 
consistent with moral duty. The old gentleman fired up in 
an instant. “Undoubtedly,” said he, with a lofty air; “un¬ 
doubtedly a man has a right to defend his honor.” Goldsmith 
immediately carried the war into Boswell’s own quarters, and 
pinned him with the question, “what he would do if affronted?” 
The pliant Boswell, who for the moment had the fear of the 
general rather than of Johnson before his eyes, replied, “he 
should think it necessary to fight.” “Why, then, that solves 
the question,” replied Goldsmith. “No, sir!” thundered out 
Johnson; “it does not follow that what a man would do, is 
therefore right.” He, however, subsequently went into a dis¬ 
cussion to show that there were necessities in the case arising 


190 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


out of the artificial refinement of society, and its proscription 
of any one who should put up with an affront without fighting 
a duel. “He then,” concluded he, “who fights a duel does 
not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self- 
defence, to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent him¬ 
self from being driven out of society. I could wish there were 
not that superfluity of refinement; but while such notions pre¬ 
vail, no doubt a man may lawfully fight a duel.” 

Another question started was, whether people who disagreed 
on a capital point could live together in friendship. Johnson 
said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had 
not the idem velle atque idem nolle—the same likings and 
aversions. Johnson rejoined, that they must shun the subject 
on which they disagreed. “But, sir,” said Goldsmith, “when 
people live together who have something as to which they dis¬ 
agree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situa¬ 
tion mentioned in the story of Blue Beard: 1 you may look into 
all the chambers but onebut we should have the greatest in¬ 
clination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject.” 
“Sir,” thundered Johnson, in a loud voice, “I am not saying 
that you could live in friendship with a man from whom you 
differ as to some point; I am only saying that I could do it.” 

Who will not say that Goldsmith had the best of this petty 
contest? How just was his remark! how felicitous the illus¬ 
tration of the blue chamber! how rude and overbearing was 
the argumentum ad hominem of Johnson, when he felt that 
he had the worst of the argument! 

The conversation turned upon ghosts. General Oglethorpe 
told the story of a Colonel Prendergast, an officer in the Duke 
of Marlborough’s army, who predicted among his comrades 
that he should die on a certain day. The battle of Malplaquet 
took place on that day. The colonel was in the midst of it, 
but came out unhurt. The firing had ceased, and his brother 
officers jested with him about the fallacy of his prediction. 
“The day is not over,” replied he, gravely; “I shall die, not¬ 
withstanding what you see.” His words proved true. The 
order for a cessation of firing had not reached one of the 
French batteries, and a random shot from it killed the colonel 
on the spot. Among his effects was found a pocket-book, in 
which he had made a solemn entry, that Sir John Friend, who 
had been executed for high treason, had appeared to him, 
either in a dream or vision, and predicted that he would meet 
him on a certain day (the very day of the battle). Colonel 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


191 


Cecil, who took possession of the effects of Colonel Prender- 
gast, and read the entry in the pocket-book, told this story to 
Pope, the poet, in the presence of General Oglethorpe. 

This story, as related by the general, appears to have been 
well received, if not credited, by both Johnson and Goldsmith, 
each of whom had something to relate in kind. Goldsmith’s 
brother, the clergyman in whom he had such implicit confi¬ 
dence, had assured him of his having seen an apparition. 
Johnson also had a friend, old Mr. Cave, the printer, at St. 
John’s Gate, “an honest man, and a sensible man,” who told 
him he had seen a ghost: he did not, however, like to talk of 
it, and seemed to be in great horror whenever it was men¬ 
tioned. “And pray, sir,” asked Boswell, “what did he say 
was the appearance?” 

“Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.” 

The reader will not be surprised at this superstitious turn in 
the conversation of such intelligent men, when he recollects 
that, but a few years before this time, all London had been 
agitated by the absurd story of the Cock-lane ghost; a matter 
which Dr. Johnson had deemed worthy of his serious investi¬ 
gation, and about which Goldsmith had written a pamphlet. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

MR. JOSEPH CRADOCK—AN AUTHOR’S CONFIDINGS—AN AMANUEN¬ 
SIS—LIFE AT EDGEW ARE — GOLDSMITH CONJURING—GEORGE 
COLMAN—THE FANTOCCINI. 

Among the agreeable acquaintances made by Goldsmith 
about this time was a Mr. Joseph Cradock, a young gentleman 
of Leicestershire, living at his ease, but disposed to “make 
himself uneasy,” by meddling with literature and the theatre; 
in fact, he had a passion for plays and players, and had come 
up to town with a modified translation of Voltaire’s tragedy of 
Zobeide, in a view to get it acted. There was no great diffi¬ 
culty in the case, as he was a man of fortune, had letters of 
introduction to persons of note, and was altogether in a dif¬ 
ferent position from the indigent man of genius whom mana¬ 
gers might harass with impunity. Goldsmith met him at the 
house of Yates, the actor, and finding that he was a friend of 



192 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


Lord Clare, soon became sociable with him. Mutual tastes 
quickened the intimacy, especially as they found means of 
serving each other. Goldsmith wrote an epilogue for the tra¬ 
gedy of Zobeide ; and Cradock, who was an amateur musician, 
arranged the music for the Threnodia Augustalis, a lament on 
the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, the political mis¬ 
tress and patron of Lord Clare, which Goldsmith had thrown 
off hastily to please that nobleman. The tragedy was played 
with some success at Covent Garden; the Lament was recited 
and sung at Mrs. Cornelys’ rooms—a very fashionable resort in 
Soho Square, got up by a woman of enterprise of that name. 
It was in. whimsical parody of those gay and somewhat pro¬ 
miscuous assemblages that Goldsmith used to call the motley 
evening parties at his lodgings “little Cornelys.” 

The Threnodia Augustalis was not publicly known to be by 
Goldsmith until several years after his death. 

Cradock was one of the few polite intimates who felt more 
disposed to sympathize with the generous qualities of the poet 
than to sport with his eccentricities. He sought his society 
whenever he came to town, and occasionally had him to his 
seat in the country. Goldsmith appreciated his sympathy, 
and unburthened himself to him without reserve. Seeing the 
lettered ease in which this amateur author was enabled to live, 
and the time he could bestow on the elaboration of a manu¬ 
script, “Ah! Mr. Cradock,” cried he, “think of me that must 
write a volume every month!” He complained to him of the 
attempts made by inferior writers, and by others who could 
scarcely come under that denomination, not only to abuse and 
depreciate his writings, but to render him ridiculous as a man; 
perverting every harmless sentiment and action into charges 
of absurdity, malice, or folly. “Sir,” said he, in the fulness of 
his heart, “I am as a lion baited by curs!” 

Another acquaintance which he made about this time, was 
a young countryman of the name of M‘Donnell, whom he met 
)in a state of destitution, and, of course, befriended. The fol¬ 
lowing grateful recollections of his kindness and his merits 
were furnished by that person in after years: 

* “It was in the year 1772,” writes he, “that the death of my 
elder brother—when in London, on my way to Ireland —left 
me in a most forlorn situation; I was then about eighteen; I 
possessed neither friends nor money, nor the means of getting 
to Ireland, of which or of England I knew scarcely anything, 
from having so long resided in France. In this situation I had 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


193 


strolled about for two or three days, considering what to do, 
but unable to come to any determination, when Providence 
directed me to the Temple Gardens. I threw myself on a seat, 
and, willing to forget my miseries for a moment, drew out a 
book; that book was a volume of Boileau. I had not been 
there long when a gentleman, strolling about, passed near me, 
and observing, perhaps, something Irish or foreign in my garb 
or countenance, addressed me: ‘ Sir, you seem studious; I hope 
you find this a favorable place to pursue it.’ ‘ Not very studi¬ 
ous, sir; I fear it is the want of society that brings me hither; 
I am solitary and unknown in tins metropolis;’ and a passage 
from Cicero—Oratio pro Archia—occurring to me, I quoted it; 
‘Hsec studia pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.’ 
‘ You are a scholar, too, sir, I perceive.’ ‘A piece of one, sir; 
but I ought still to have been in the college where I had the 
good fortune to pick up the little I know.’ A good deal of con¬ 
versation ensued; I told him part of my history, and he, in 
return, gave his address in the Temple, desiring me to call 
soon, from which, to my infinite surprise and gratification, I 
found that the person who thus seemed to take an interest in 
my fate was my countryman, and a distinguished ornament of 
letters. 

“I did not fail to keep the-appointment, and was received in 
the kindest manner. He told me, smilingly, that he was not 
rich; that he could do little for me in direct pecuniary aid, but 
would endeavor to put me in the way of doing something for 
myself; observing, that he could at least furnish me with ad¬ 
vice not wholly useless to a young man placed in the heart of 
a great metropolis. ‘ In London,’ he continued, ‘nothing is to 
be got for nothing; you must work; and no man who chooses 
to be industrious need be under obligations to another, for 
here labor of every kind commands its reward. If you 
think proper to assist me occasionally as amanuensis, I shall 
be obliged, and you will be placed under no obligation, until 
something more permanent can be secured for you.’ This 
employment, which I pursued for some time, was to translate 
passages from Buffon, which was abridged or altered, accord¬ 
ing to circumstances, for his Natural History.” 

Goldsmith’s literary tasks were fast getting ahead of him, 
and he began now to “ toil after them in vain.” 

Five volumes of the Natural History here spoken of had long 
since been paid for by Mr. Griffin, yet most of them were still 
to be written. His young amanuensis bears testimony to his 


194 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


embarrassments and perplexities, but to the degree of equa¬ 
nimity with which he bore them: 

“It has been said,” observes he, “that he was irritable. 
Such may have been the case at times; nay, I believe it was 
so; for what with the continual pursuit of authors, printers, 
and booksellers, and occasional pecuniary embarrassments, 
few could have avoided exhibiting similar marks of impa* 
tience. But it was never so toward me. I saw him only in 
his bland and kind moods, with a flow, perhaps an overflow, 
of the milk of human kindness for all who were in any manner 
dependent upon him. I looked upon him with awe and venera¬ 
tion, and he upon me as a kind of parent upon a child. 

“His manner and address exhibited much frankness and 
cordiality, particularly to those with whom he possessed any 
degree of intimacy. His good-nature was equally apparent. 
You could not dislike the man, although several of his follies 
and foibles you might be tempted to condemn. He was 
generous and inconsiderate; money with him had little 
value. ” 

To escape from many of the tormentors just alluded to, and 
to devote himself without interruption to his task, Godsmith 
took lodgings for the summer at a farm-house near the six-mile 
stone on the Edge ware road, and carried down his books in 
two return post-chaises. He used to say he believed the 
farmer’s family thought him an odd character, similar to that 
in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her chil¬ 
dren : he was The Gentleman. Boswell tells us that he went 
to visit him at the place in company with Mickle, translator of 
the Lusiad. Goldsmith was not at home. Having a curiosity 
to see his apartment, however, they went in, and found curi¬ 
ous scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall 
with a black lead pencil. 

The farm-house in question is still in existence, though much 
altered. It stands upon a gentle eminence in Hyde Lane, com¬ 
manding a pleasant prospect toward Hendon. The room is 
still pointed out in which She Stoops to Conquer was written; 
a convenient and airy apartment, up one flight of stairs. 

Some matter of fact traditions concerning the author were 
furnished, a few years since, by a son of the farmer, who was 
sixteen years of age at the time Goldsmith resided with his 
father. Though he had engaged to board with the family, his 
meals were generally sent to him in his room, in which he 
passed the most of his time, negligently dressed, with his shirt- 


OLIVER G OLD SMI TIL 


195 


collar open, busily engaged in writing. Sometimes, probably 
when in moods of composition, he would wander into the 
kitchen, without noticing any one, stand musing with his back 
to the fire, and then hurry off again to his room, no doubt to 
commit to paper some thought which had struck him. 

Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was to be seen 
loitering and reading and musing under the hedges. He was 
subject to fits of wakefulness and read much in bed; if not dis¬ 
posed to read, he still kept the candle burning; if he wished to 
extinguish it, and it was out of his reach, he flung his slipper 
at it, which would be found in the morning near the over¬ 
turned candlestick and daubed with grease. He was noted 
here, as everywhere else,, for his charitable feelings. No beg¬ 
gar applied to him in vain, and he evinced on all occasions 
great commiseration for the poor. 

He had the use of the parlor to receive and entertain com¬ 
pany, and was visited by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, Hugh Boyd, 
the reputed author of “Junius,” Sir William Chambers, and 
other distinguished characters. He gave occasionally, though 
rarely, a dinner party; and on one occasion, when his guests 
were detained by a thunder shower, he got up a dance and car¬ 
ried the merriment late into the night. 

As usual, he was the promoter of hilarity among the young, 
and at one time took the children of the house to see a com¬ 
pany of strolling players at Hendon. The greatest amusement 
to the party, however, was derived from his own jokes on the 
road and his comments on the performance, which produced 
infinite laughter among his youthful companions. 

Near to his rural retreat at Edge ware, a Mr. Seguin, an 
Irish merchant, of literary tastes, had country quarters for his 
family, where Goldsmith was always welcome. 

In this family he would indulge in playful and even grotesque 
humor, and was ready for anything—conversation, music, or a 
game of romps. He prided himself upon his dancing, and 
would walk a minuet with Mrs. Seguin, to the infinite amuse¬ 
ment of herself and the children, whose shouts of laughter he 
bore with perfect good-humor. He would sing Irish songs, and 
the Scotch ballads of Johnny Armstrong. He took the lead in 
the children’s sports of blind-man’s buff, hunt the slipper, etc., 
or in their games at cards, and was the most noisy of the party, 
affecting to cheat and to be excessively eager to win; while 
with children of smaller size he would turn the hind part of his 
wig before, and play all kinds of tricks to amuse them. 


196 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


One word as to his musical skill and his performance on the 
flute, which comes up so invariably in all his fireside revels. 
He really knew nothing of music scientifically; he had a good 
ear, and may have played sweetly; but we are told he could 
not read a note of music. Roubiliac, the statuary, once played 
a trick upon him in this respect. He pretended to score down 
an air as the poet played it, but put down crotchets and semi- 
breves at random. When he had finished, Goldsmith cast his 
eyes over it and pronounced it correct! It is possible that his 
execution in music was like his style in writing; in sweetness 
and melody he may have snatched a grace beyond the reach of 
art! 

He was at all times a capital companion for children, and 
knew how to fall in with their humors. “I little thought,’' 
said Miss Hawkins, the woman grown, “ what I should have to 
boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill by two 
bits of paper on his fingers.” He entertained Mrs. Garrick, we 
are told, with a whole budget of stories and songs; delivered 
the “ Chimney Sweep” with exquisite taste as a solo; and per¬ 
formed a duet with Garrick of “Old Rose and Burn the 
Bellows.” 

“ I was only five years old,” says the late George Colman, 
“ when Goldsmith one evening, when drinking coffee with my 
father, took me on his knee and began to play with me, which 
amiable act I returned with a very smart slap in the face; it 
must have been a tingler, for I left the marks of my little 
spiteful paw upon his cheek. This infantile outrage was fol¬ 
lowed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my father 
in an adjoining room, to undergo solitary imprisonment in the 
dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably. 
At length a friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy; it 
was the good-natured doctor himself, with a lighted candle in 
his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still 
partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and 
sobbed, and he fondled and soothed until I began to brighten. 
He seized the propitious moment, placed three hats upon the 
carpet, and a shilling under each; the shillings, he told me, 
were England, France, and Spain. ‘ Hey, presto, cockolorum! ’ 
cried the doctor, and lo! on uncovering the shillings, they were 
all found congregated under one. I was no politician at the 
time, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden 
revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under 
one crown; but, as I was also no conjurer, it amazed me be' 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 197 

yond measure. From that time, whenever the doctor came to 
visit my father, 

‘I pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile;’ 

a game of romps constantly ensued, and we were always cor¬ 
dial friends and merry playfellows.” 

Although Goldsmith made the Edgeware farmhouse his head¬ 
quarters for the summer, he would absent himself for weeks at 
a time on visits to Mr. Cradock, Lord Clare, and Mr. Langton, 
at their country-seats. He would often visit town, also, to 
dine and partake of the public amusements. On one occasion 
he accompanied Edmund Burke to witness a performance of 
the Italian Fantoccini or Puppets, in Panton Street; an exhibi¬ 
tion which had hit the caprice of the town, and was in great 
vogue. The puppets were set in motion by wires, so well con¬ 
cealed as to be with difficulty detected. Boswell, with his 
usual obtuseness with respect to Goldsmith, accuses him of be¬ 
ing jealous of the puppets! “When Burke,” said he, “praised 
the dexterity with which one of them tossed a pike,” ‘ Fshaw,’ 
said Goldsmith with some warmth , ‘ I can do it better myself. ’ ” 
“ The same evening,” adds Boswell, “when supping at Burke’s 
lodgings, he broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the 
company how much better he could jump over a stick than the 
puppets.” 

Goldsmith jealous of puppets! This even passes in absurdity 
Boswell’s charge upon him of being jealous of the beauty of 
the two Miss Hornecks. 

The Panton Street puppets were destined to be a source of 
further amusement to the town, and of annoyance to the little 
autocrat of the stage. Foote, the Aristophanes of the English 
drama, who was always on the alert to turn every subject of 
popular excitement to account, seeing the success of the Fan¬ 
toccini, gave out that he should produce a Primitive Puppet- 
show at the Haymarket, to be entitled The Handsome Cham¬ 
bermaid, or Piety in Pattens : intended to burlesque the sentU 
mental comedy which Garrick still maintained at Drury Lane. 
The idea of a play to be performed in a regular theatre by 
puppets excited the curiosity and talk of the town. “Will 
your puppets be as large as life, Mr. Foote?” demanded a lady 
of rank. “Oh, no, my ladyreplied Foote, “not much large ? 
than Garrick ” 


198 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

Broken health—dissipation and debts—the irish widow- 
practical JOKES — SCRUB—A MISQUOTED PUN—MALAGRIDA — 
GOLDSMITH PROVED TO BE A FOOL — DISTRESSED BALLAD 
SINGERS—THE POET AT RANELAGH. 

Goldsmith returned to town in the autumn (1772), with his 
health much disordered. His close fits of sedentary applica¬ 
tion, during which he in a manner tied himself to the mast, 
had laid the seeds of a lurking malady in his system, and pro¬ 
duced a severe illness in the course of the summer. Town life 
was not favorable to the health either of body or mind. He 
could not resist the siren voice of temptation, which, now that 
he had become a notoriety, assailed him on every side. Ac¬ 
cordingly we find him launching away in a career of social 
dissipation; dining and supping out; at clubs, at routs, at 
theatres; he is a guest with Johnson at the Thrales’, and an 
object of Mrs. Thrale’s lively sallies: he is a lion at Mrs. Vesey’s 
and Mrs. Montagu’s, where some of the high-bred blue-stock¬ 
ings pronounce him a “wild genius,”and others, peradventure, 
a “wild Irishman.” In the meantime his pecuniary difficul¬ 
ties are increasing upon him, conflicting with his proneness to 
pleasure and expense, and contributing by the harassment of 
his mind to the wear and tear of his constitution. His ‘ ‘ Ani¬ 
mated Nature,” though not finished, has been entirely paid for 
and the money spent. The money advanced by Garrick on 
Newbery’s note still hangs over him as a debt. The tale on 
which Newbery had loaned from two to three hundred pounds 
previous to the excursion to Barton has proved a failure. The 
bookseller is urgent for the settlement of his complicated ac¬ 
count ; the perplexed author has nothing to offer him in liqui¬ 
dation but the copyright of the comedy which he has in his 
portfolio; “Though to tell you the truth, Frank,” said he, 
“there arc great doubts of its success.” The offer was ac¬ 
cepted, and, like bargains wrung from Goldsmith in times of 
emergency, turned out a golden speculation to the bookseller. 

In this way Goldsmith went on “overrunning the consta¬ 
ble,” as he termed it; spending everything in advance; work¬ 
ing with an overtasked head and weary heart to pay for past 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


199 


pleasures and past extravagance, and at the same time incur¬ 
ring new debts, to perpetuate his struggles and darken his 
future prospects. While the excitement of society and the ex¬ 
citement of composition conspire to keep up a feverishness of 
the system, he has incurred an unfortunate habit of quacking 
himself with James’ powders, a fashionable panacea of the 
day. 

A farce, produced this year by Garrick, and entitled The 
Irish Widow , perpetuates the memory of practical jokes 
played off a year or two previously upon the alleged vanity 
of poor, simple-hearted Goldsmith. He was one evening at 
the house of his friend Burke, when he was beset by a tenth 
muse, an Irish widow and authoress, just arrived from Ire¬ 
land, full of brogue and blunders, and poetic fire and rantipole 
gentility. She was soliciting subscriptions for her poems; and 
assailed Goldsmith for his patronage; the great Goldsmith— 
her countryman, and of course her friend. She overpowered 
him with eulogiums on his own poems, and then read some 
of her own, with vehemence of tone and gesture, appealing 
continually to the great Goldsmith to know how he relished 
them. 

Poor Goldsmith did all that a kind-hearted and gallant gen¬ 
tleman could do in such a case; he praised her poems as far as 
the stomach of his sense would permit: perhaps a little fur¬ 
ther ; he offered her his subscription, and it was not until she 
had retired with many parting compliments to the great Gold¬ 
smith, that he pronounced the poetry which had been inflicted 
on him execrable. The whole scene had been a hoax got up 
by Burke for the amusement of his company, and the Irish 
widow, so admirably performed, had been personated by a 
Mrs. Balfour, a lady of his connection, of great sprightliness 
and talent. 

We see nothing in the story to establish the alleged vanity 
of Goldsmith, but we think it tells rather to the disadvantage 
of Burke; being unwarrantable under their relations of friend 
ship, and a species of waggery quite beneath his genius. 

Croker, in his notes to Boswell, gives another of these prac¬ 
tical jokes perpetrated by Burke at the expense of Goldsmith’s 
credulity. It was related to Croker by Colonel O’Moore, of 
Cloghan Castle, in Ireland, who was a party concerned. The 
colonel and Burke, walking one day through Leicester Square 
on their way to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, with whom they wero 
to dine, observed Goldsmith, who was likewise to be a guest, 


200 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


standing and regarding a crowd which was staring and shout¬ 
ing at some foreign ladies in the window of a hotel. “ Observe 
Goldsmith,”said Burke to O’Moore, “and mark what passes be¬ 
tween us at Sir Joshua’s.” They passed on and reached there 
before him. Burke received Goldsmith with affected reserve 
and coldness; being pressed to explain the reason, “Really,” 
said he, “I am ashamed to keep company with a person who 
could act as you have just done in the Square.” Goldsmith 
protected he was ignorant of what was meant. “Why,” said 
Burke, “did you not exclaim as you were looking up at those 
women, what stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring 
with such admiration at those painted Jezebels, while a man of 
your talents passed by unnoticed?” “Surely, surely, my dear 
friend,’’cried Goldsmith, with alarm, “surely I did not say 
so?” “Nay,” replied Burke, “if you had not said so, how 
should I have known it?” “That’s true,” answered Gold¬ 
smith; “I am very sorry—it was very foolish: I do recollect 
that something of the hind passed through my mind , but I did 
not think I had uttered it .” 

It is proper to observe that these jokes were played off 
by Burke before he had attained the full eminence of his social 
position, and that he may have felt privileged to take liberties 
with Goldsmith as his countryman and college associate. It is 
evident, however, that the peculiarities of the latter, and his 
guileless simplicity, made him a butt for the broad waggery of 
some of his associates; while others more polished, though 
equally perfidious, were on the watch to give currency to his 
bulls and blunders. 

The Stratford jubilee, in honor of Shakespeare, where Bos¬ 
well had made a fool of himself, was still in every one’s mind. 
It was sportively suggested that a fete should be held at Lich¬ 
field in honor of Johnson and Garrick, and that the Beaux' 
Stratagem should be played by the members of the Literary 
Club. “Then,” exclaimed Goldsmith, “I shall certainly play 
Scrub. I should like of all things to try my hand at that char¬ 
acter.” The unwary speech, which any one else might have 
made without comment, has been thought worthy of record as 
whimsically characteristic. Beauclerc was extremely apt to 
circulate anecdotes at his expense, founded perhaps on some 
trivial incident, but dressed up with the embellishments of his 
sarcastic brain. One relates to a venerable dish of peas, served 
up at Sir Joshua’s table, which should have been green, but 
were any other color. A wag suggested to Goldsmith, in a 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


201 


whisper, that they should be sent to Hammersmith, as that 
was the way to turn-em-green (Turnham-Green). Goldsmith, 
delighted with the pun, endeavored to repeat it at Burke’s 
table, but missed the point. “That is the way to make ’em 
green,” said he. Nobody laughed. He perceived he was at 
fault. “I mean that is the road to turn ’em green.” A dead 
pause and a stare; “ whereupon,” adds Beauclerc, “ he started 
up disconcerted and abruptly left the table. ” This is evidently 
one of Beauclerc’s caricatures. 

On another occasion the poet and Beauclerc were seated at 
the theatre next to Lord Shelburne, the minister, whom politi¬ 
cal writers thought proper to nickname Malagrida. “ Do you 
know,” said Goldsmith to his lordship in the course of conver¬ 
sation, “that I never could conceive why they call you Mal¬ 
agrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man.” This was 
too good a trip of the tongue for Beauclerc to let pass: he 
serves it up in his next letter to Lord Charlemont, as a speci¬ 
men of a mode of turning a thought the wrong way, peculiar 
to the poet; he makes merry over it with his witty and sarcas¬ 
tic compeer, Horace Walpole, who pronounces it “ a picture of 
Goldsmith’s whole life.” Dr. Johnson alone, when he hears it 
bandied about as Goldsmith’s last blunder, growls forth a 
friendly defence: “Sir,” said he, “it was a mere blunder in 
emphasis. He meant to say, I wonder they should use Mala¬ 
grida as a term of reproach.” Poor Goldsmith! On such 
points he was ever doomed to be misinterpreted. Rogers, the 
poet, meeting in times long subsequent with a survivor of 
those days, asked him what Goldsmith really was in conversa¬ 
tion. The old conversational character was too deeply stamped 
in the memory of the veteran to be effaced. “Sir,” replied the 
old wiseacre, “ he was a fool. The right word never came to 
him. If you gave him back a bad shilling, he’d say, Why it’s 
as good a shilling as ever was horn. You know he ought to 
have said coined. Coined , sir, never entered his head. He ivas 
a fool, sir.” 

We have so many anecdotes in which Goldsmith’s simplicity 
is played upon, that it is quite a treat to meet with one in which 
he is represented playing upon the simplicity of others, espe¬ 
cially when the victim of his joke is the “ Great Cham” himself, 
whom all ethers are disposed to hold so much in awe. Gold¬ 
smith and Johnson were supping cosily together at a tavern in 
Dean 'Street, Soho, kept by Jack Roberts, a singer at Drury 
Lane, and a protege of Garrick’s. Johnson delighted in these 


202 


OLIVKR GOLDSMITH. 


gastronomical tete-a-tetes, and was expatiating in high good 
humor on rumps and kidneys, the veins of his forehead swell¬ 
ing with the ardor of mastication. “These,” said he, “are 
pretty little things; but a man must eat a great many of them 
before he is filled.” “Aye; but how many of them,” asked 
Goldsmith, with affected simplicity, “would reach to the 
moon?” “To the moon! Ah, sir, that, I fear, exceeds your 
calculation.” “Not at all, sir; I think I could tell.” “Pray 
then, sir, let us hear.” “Why, sir, one, if it were long 
enough /” Johnson growled for a time at finding himself 
caught in such a trite schoolboy trap. “Well, sir,” cried he at 
length, “I have deserved it. I should not have provoked so 
foolish an answer by so foolish a question.” 

Among the many incidents related as illustrative of Gold- 
smith’s vanity and envy is one which occurred one evening 
when he was in a drawing-room with a party of ladies, and a 
ballad-singer under the window struck up his favorite song of 
“ Sally Salisbury.” “ How miserably this woman sings!” ex¬ 
claimed he. “Pray, doctor,” said the lady of the house, 
“could you do it better?” “Yes, madam, and the company 
shall be judges.” The company, of course, prepared to be 
entertained by an absurdity; but their smiles were well-nigh 
turned to tears, for he acquitted himself with a skill and 
pathos that drew universal applause. He had, in fact, a deli¬ 
cate ear for music, which had been jarred by the false notes of 
the ballad-singer; and there were certain pathetic ballads, 
associated with recollections of his childhood, which were sure 
to touch the springs of his heart. We have another story of 
him, connected with ballad-singing, which is still more charac¬ 
teristic. He was one evening at the house of Sir William 
Chambers, in Berners Street, seated at a whist-table with Sir 
William, Lady Chambers, and Baretti, when all at once he 
threw down his cards, hurried out of the room and into the 
street. He returned in an instant, Resumed his seat, and the 
game went on. Sir William, after a little hesitation, ventured 
to ask the cause of his retreat, fearing he had been overcome 
by the heat of the room. “Not at all,” replied Goldsmith; 
‘ 4 but in truth I could not bear to hear that unfortunate woman 
in the street, half singing, half sobbing, for such' tones could 
only arise from the extremity of distress; her voice grated 
painfully on my ear and jarred my frame, so that I could not 
rest until I had sent her away.” “It was in fact a poor ballad- 
singer, whose cracked voice had been heard by others of the 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


203 


party, but without having the same effect on their sensibilities. 
It was the reality of his fictitious scene in the story of the 
“ Man in Black;” wherein he describes a woman in rags with 
one child in her arms and another on her back, attempting to 
sing ballads, but with such a mournful voice that it was diffi¬ 
cult to determine whether she was singing or crying. ‘ ‘ A 
wretch,” he adds, “who, in the deepest distress, still aimed at 
good humor, was an object my friend was by no means capable 
of withstanding.” The Man in Black gave the poor woman all 
that he had—a bundle of matches. Goldsmith, it is probable, 
sent his ballad-singer away rejoicing with all the money in his 
pocket. 

Ranelagh was at that time greatly in vogue as a place of 
public entertainment. It was situated near Chelsea; the prin¬ 
cipal room was a rotunda of great dimensions, with an orches¬ 
tra in the centre, and tiers of boxes all round. It was a place 
to which Johnson resorted occasionally. “I am a great friend 
to public amusements,” said he, “for they keep people from 
vice.”* Goldsmith was equally a friend to them, though per¬ 
haps not altogether on such moral grounds. He was particu¬ 
larly fond of masquerades, which were then exceedingly popu¬ 
lar, and got up at Ranelagh with great expense and magnifi¬ 
cence. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had likewise a taste for 
such amusements, was sometimes his companion, at other 
times he went alone; his peculiarities of person and manner 
would soon betray him, whatever might be his disguise, and 
he would be singled out by wags, acquainted with his foibles, 
and more successful than himself in maintaining their incog¬ 
nito, as a capital subject to be played upon. Some, pretend¬ 
ing not to know him, would decry his writings, and praise 
those of his contemporaries; others would laud his verses to 
the skies, but purposely misquote and burlesque them; others 
would annoy him with parodies; while one young lady, whom 
he was teasing, as he supposed, with great success and infinite 
humor, silenced his rather boisterous laughter by quoting his 
own line about “ the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” 


* “Alas, sir!” said Johnson, speaking, when in another mood, of grand houses, 
fine gardens, and splendid places of public amusement; “alas, sir! these are onlv 
struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh it gave an expansion and 
gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced anywhere else. But, as 
Xerxes -wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one c£ 
that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterward, so it went to my 
heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid 
to go home and think.” 



204 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


On one occasion he was absolutely driven out of the house by 
the persevering jokes of a wag, whose complete disguise gave 
him no means of retaliation. 

His name appearing in the newspapers among the distin¬ 
guished persons present at one of these amusements, his old 
enemy, Kenrick, immediately addressed to him a copy of 
anonymous verses, to the following purport. 

To Dr. Goldsmith; on seeing his name in the list of mum¬ 
mers at the late masquerade: 

“ How widely different, Goldsmith, are the ways 
Of Doctors now, and those of ancient daysl 
Theirs taught the truth in academic shades, 

Ours in lewd hops and midnight masquerades. 

So changed the times! say, philosophic sage, 

Whose genius suits so well this tasteful age, 

Is the Pantheon, late a sink obscene. 

Become the fountain of chaste Hippocrene? 

Or do thy moral numbers quaintly flow, 

Inspired by th’ Aganippe of Soho? 

Do wisdom’s sons gorge cates and vermicelli, 

Like beastly Bickerstaffe or bothering Kelly? 

Or art thou tired of th’ undeserved applause 
Bestowed on bards affecting Virtue’s cause? 

Is this the good that makes the humble vain, 

The good philosophy should not disdain? 

If so, let pride dissemble all it can, 

A modern sage is still much less than man.” 

Goldsmith was keenly sensitive to attacks of the kind, and 
meeting Kenrick at the Chapter Coffee-house, called him to 
sharp account for taking such a liberty with his name, and 
calling his morals in question, merely on account of his being 
seen at a place of general resort and amusement. Kenrick 
shuffled and sneaked, protesting that he meant nothing dero¬ 
gatory to his private character. Goldsmith let him know, 
however, that he was aware of his having more than once in¬ 
dulged in attacks of this dastard kind, and intimated that an¬ 
other such outrage would be followed by personal chastise¬ 
ment. 

Kenrick having played the craven in his presence, avenged 
himself as soon as he was gone by complaining of his having 
made a wanton attack upon him, and by making coarse com¬ 
ments upon his writings, conversation, and person. 

The scurrilous satire of Kenrick, however unmerited, may 
have checked Goldsmith’s taste for masquerades. Sir Joshua 
Reynolds calling on the poet one morning, found him walking 
about his room in somewhat of a reverie, kicking a bundle of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


205 


clothes before him like a foot-ball. It proved to be an expen¬ 
sive masquerade dross, which he said he had been fool enough 
to purchase, and as there was no other way of getting the 
worth of his money, he was trying to take it out in exercise. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

INVITATION TO CHRISTMAS—THE SPRING VELVET COAT—THE 
HAYMAKING WIG—THE MISCHANCES OF LOO—THE FAIR CUL¬ 
PRIT—A DANCE WITH THE JESSAMY BRIDE. 

From the feverish dissipations of town, Goldsmith is sum¬ 
moned away to partake of the genial dissipations of the coun¬ 
try. In the month of December, a letter from Mrs. Bunbury 
invites him down to Burton, to pass the Christmas holidays. 
The letter is written in the usual playful vein which marks his 
intercourse with this charming family. He is to come in his 
“ smart spring-velvet coat,” to bring a new wig to dance with 
the haymakers in, and above all, to follow the advice of herself 
and her sister (the Jessamy Bride), in playing loo. This letter, 
which plays so archly, yet kindly, with some of poor Gold¬ 
smith’s peculiarities, and bespeaks such real ladylike regard 
for him, requires a word or two of annotation. The spring- 
velvet suit alluded to appears to have been a gallant adorn¬ 
ment (somewhat in the style of the famous bloom-colored coat) 
in which Goldsmith had figured in the preceding month of 
May—the season of blossoms—for, on the 21st of that month, 
we find the following entry in the chronicle of Mr. William 
Filby, tailor: To your blue velvet suit, £21 10s. 9 d. Also, about 
the same time, a suit of livery and a crimson collar for the 
serving man. Again we hold the Jessamy Bride responsible 
for this gorgeous splendor of wardrobe. 

The new wig no doubt is a bag-wig and solitaire, still highly 
the mode, and in which Goldsmith is represented as figuring 
when in full dress, equipped with his sword. 

As to the dancing with the haymakers, we presume it al¬ 
ludes to some gambol of the poet, in the course of his former 
visit to Barton; when he ranged the fields and lawns a char¬ 
tered libertine, and tumbled into the fish-ponds. 

As to the suggestions about loo, they are in sportive allusion 
to the doctor’s mode of playing that game in their merry 



206 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


evening parties; affecting the desperate gambler and easy 
dupe; running counter to all rule; making extravagant ven¬ 
tures ; reproaching all others with cowardice; dashing at all 
hazards at the pool, and getting himself completely loo’d, to 
the great amusement of the company. The drift of the fair 
sisters’ advice was most probably to tempt him on, and then 
leave him in the lurch. 

With these comments we subjoin Goldsmith’s reply to Mrs, 
Bunbury, a fine piece of off-hand, humorous writing, which 
has but in late years been given to the public, and which 
throws a familiar light on the social circle at Barton. 

“Madam: I read your letter with all that allowance which 
critical candor could require, but after all find so much to 
object to, and so much to raise my indignation, that I cannot 
help giving it a serious answer. I am not so ignorant, 
madam, as not to see there are many sarcasms contained in it, 
and solecisms also. (Solecism is a word that comes from the 
town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, 
and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains 
from a town also of that name—but this is learning you have 
no taste for!)—I say, madam, there are many sarcasms in it, 
and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I’ll 
take leave to quote your own words, and give you my 
remarks upon them as they occur. You begin as follows: 

' I hope, my good Doctor, you soon will be here, 

And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear, 

To open our ball the first day of the year.’ 

“Pray, madam, where did you ever find the epithet ‘good,’ 
applied to the title of doctor? Had you called me ‘learned 
doctor,’ or ‘grave doctor,’ or ‘noble doctor,’ it might be 
allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to 
cavil at trifles, you talk of ‘my spring-velvet coat,’ and advise 
me to wear it the first day in the year, that is, in the middle 
of winter!—a spring-velvet coat in the middle of winter! ! ! 
That would be a solecism indeed! and yet to increase the 
inconsistence, in another part of your letter you call me a 
beau. Now, on one side or other you must be wrong. If I 
am a beau, I can never think of wearing a spring-velvet in 
winter; and if I am not a beau, why then, that explains 
itself. But let me go on to your two next strange lines: 

‘ And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay. 

To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.’ 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


20 ? 


“The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself 
seem sensible of: you say your sister will laugh; and so 
indeed she well may! The Latins have an expression for a 
contemptuous kind of laughter, 1 naso contemnere adunco 
that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you 
in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I 
come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary proposi¬ 
tions, which is, to take your and your sister’s advice in 
playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indig¬ 
nation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me at once 
with verse and resentment. I take advice! and from whom? 
You shall hear. 

“ First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 

The company set, and the word to be Loo: 

All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 

And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the centre. 

Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 
At never once finding a visit from Pam. 

I lay down my stake, apparently cool, 

While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. 

I fret in m} r gizzard, yet, cautious and sly, 

I wish all my friends may be bolder than I: 

Yet still they sit snug, not a creature will aim 
By losing their money to venture at fame. 

’Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, 

’Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold: 

All play their own way, and they think me an ass, . . . 

‘ What does Mrs. Bunbury? 5 . . . ‘I, sir? I pass.’ 

‘ Pray what does Miss Horneck? take courage, come do,’ . . . 

‘ Who, I? let me see, sir, why I must pass too.’ 

Mr. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil. 

To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 

Yet still I sit snug, and continue to sigh on, 

Till, made by my losses as bold as a lion, 

I venture at all, while my avarice regards 

The whole pool as my own. . . . ‘ Come give me five cards.’ 

‘ Well done! ’ cry the ladies; ‘Ah, Doctor, that's good! 

The pool's very rich, ... ah! the Doctor is loo’d! ’ 

Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext, 

I ask for advice from the lady that’s next: 

‘ Pray, ma’am, be so good as to give your advice; 

Don’t you think the best way is to venture for’t twice? ’ 

‘I advise,’ cries the lady, ‘ to try it, I own. . . . 

4 Ah! the Doctor is loo’d! Come, Doctor, put down.’ 

Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager, 

And so bold, and so bold, I’m at last a bold beggar. 

Now, ladies, I ask, if law-matters you’re skill’d in, 

Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding: 

For giving advice that is not worth a straw, 

May well be call'd picking of pockets in law; 

And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye, 

Is, b} r quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 


208 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


What justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought! 

By the gods, I’ll enjoy it, tho’ ’tis but in thought! 

Both are plac’d at the bar, with all proper decorum. 

With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before ’em; 

Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, 

But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 

When uncover’d, a buzz of inquiry runs round, 

‘Pray what are their crimes? ’ . . . They’ve been pilfering found* 

\But, pray, who have they pilfer’d? ’ . . . ‘ A doctor, I hear.’ 

4 What , yon solemn-faced ,, odd-looking man that stayids near? ’ 

‘The same.’ . . . ‘ What a pity! how does it surprise one, 

Two handsomer culprits 1 never set eyes on! ’ 

Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, 

To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 

First Sir Charles advances with phrases well-strung, 

‘Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.’ 

‘The younger the wrose,’ I return him again, 

‘It shows that their habits are all dyed.in grain.’ 

‘ But then they’re so handsome, one’s bosom it grieves.’ 

‘What signifies handsome , when people are thieves? ’ 

‘But where is your justice? their cases are hard.’ 

‘ What signifies justice? I want the reward. 

“ ‘ There’s the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds-, 
there’s the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch offers forty 
pounds; there’s the parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the- 
pound to St. Giles’ watch-house, offers forty pounds—I shall 
have all that if I convict them! ’— 

“ ‘ But consider their case, ... it may yet be your own 1 
And see how they kneel! Is your heart made of stone?’ 

This moves! ... so at last I agree to relent, 

For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent. 

“I challenge you all to answer this: I tell you, you cannot. 
It cuts deep. But now for the rest of the letter: and next—but 
I want room—so I believe I shall battle the rest out at Barton 
some day next week. I don’t value you all! 

“O. G.” 

We regret that we have no record of this Christmas visit to 
Barton; that the poet had no Boswell to follow at his heels, 
and take note of all his sayings and doings. We can only 
picture him in our minds, casting off all care; enacting the lord 
of misrule; presiding at the Christmas revels; providing all 
kinds of merriment; keeping the card-table in an uproar, and 
finally opening the ball on the first day of the year in his 
spring-velvet suit, with the Jessamy Bride for a partner. 


• OLIVER HOLD SMITH. 


209 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THEATRICAL DELAYS—NEGOTIATIONS WITH COLMAN—LETTER TO 
GARRICK—CROAKING OF THE MANAGER—NAMING OF THE PLAY 
—SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER—FOOTE’S PRIMITIVE PUPPET-SHOW, 
PIETY ON PATTENS—FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THE COMEDY- 
AGITATION OF THE AUTHOR—SUCCESS—COLMAN SQUIBBED OUT 
OF TOWN. 

The gay life depicted in the two last chapters, while it kept 
Goldsmith in a state of continual excitement, aggravated the 
malady which was impairing his constitution; yet his increase 
ing perplexities in money matters drove him to the dissipation 
of society as a relief from solitary care. The delays of the 
theatre added to those perplexities. He had long since finished 
his new comedy, yet the year 1772 passed away without his 
being able to get it on the stage. No one, uninitiated in the 
interior of a theatre, that little world of traps and trickery, 
can have any idea of the obstacles and perplexities multiplied 
in the way of the most eminent and successful author by the 
mismanagement of managers, the jealousies and intrigues of 
rival authors, and the fantastic and impertinent caprices of 
actors. A long and baffling negotiation was carried on between 
Goldsmith and Colman, the manager of Covent Garden; who 
retained the play in his hands until the middle of January 
(1773), without coming to a decision. The theatrical season 
was rapidly passing away, and Goldsmith’s pecuniary difficul¬ 
ties were augmenting and pressing on him. We may judge of 
his anxiety by the following letter: 

“ To George Colman , Esq. 

“Dear Sir: I entreat you’ll relieve me from that state of 
suspense in which I have been kept for a long time. Whatever 
objections you have made or shall make to my play, I will en¬ 
deavor to remove and not argue about them. To bring in any 
new judges either of its merits or faults I can never submit to. 
Upon a former occasion, when my other play was before Mr. 
Garrick, he offered to bring me before Mr. Whitehead’s tribu¬ 
nal, but I refused the proposal with indignation: I hope I shall 
not experience as harsh treatment from you as from him. 1 


2J0 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


have, as you know, a large sum of money to make up shortly; 
by accepting my play, I can readily satisfy my creditor that 
way; at any rate, I must look about to some certainty to be 
prepared. For God’s sake take the play, and let us make the 
best of it, and let me have the same measure, at least, which 
you have given as bad plays as mine. 

“ I am your friend and servant, 

“Oliver Goldsmith.” 

Colman returned the manuscript with the blank sides of the 
leaves scored with disparaging comments and suggested alter¬ 
ations, but with the intimation that the faith of the theatre 
should be kept, and the play acted notwithstanding. Gold¬ 
smith submitted the criticisms to some of his friends, who pro¬ 
nounced them trivial, unfair, and contemptible, and intimated 
that Colman, being a dramatic writer himself, might be actu¬ 
ated by jealousy. The play was then sent, with Colman’s 
comments written on it, to Garrick; but he had scarce sent it 
when Johnson interfered, represented the evil that might result 
from an apparent rejection of it by Covent Garden, and under¬ 
took to go forthwith to Colman, and have a talk with him Oi* 
the subject. Goldsmith, therefore, penned the following note 
to Garrick: 

“ Dear Sir: I ask many pardons for the trouble I gave you 
yesterday. Upon more mature deliberation, and the advice of 
a sensible friend, I began to think it indelicate in me to throw 
upon you the odium of confirming Mr. Colman’s sentence. I 
therefore request you will send my play back by my servant; 
for having been assured of having it acted at the other house, 
though I confess yours in every respect more to my wish, yet 
it would be folly in me to forego an advantage which lies in 
my power of appealing from Mr. Colman’s opinion to the 
judgment of the town. I entreat, if not too late, you will keep 
this affair a secret for some time. 

“ I am, dear sir, your very humble servant, 

“Oliver Goldsmith.” 

The negotiation of Johnson with the manager of Co vent 
Garden was effective. “Colman,” he says, “was prevailed on 
at last, by much solicitation, nay, a kind of force,” to bring 
forward the comedy. Still the manager was ungenerous; or, 
at least, indiscreet enough to express his opinion, that it would 
not reach a second representation. The plot, he said, was bad, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


211 


and the interest not sustained; “it dwindled, and dwindled, 
and at last went out like the snuff of a candle.” The effect of 
his croaking was soon apparent within the walls of the theatre. 
Two of the most popular actors, Woodward and Gentleman 
Smith, to whom the parts of Tony Lumpkin and Young Mar¬ 
low were assigned, refused to act them; one of them alleging, 
in excuse, the evil predictions of the manager. Goldsmith was 
advised to postpone the performance of his play until he could 
get these important parts well supplied. “No,” said he, “I 
would sooner that my play were damned by bad players than 
merely saved by good acting.” 

Quick was substituted for’Woodward in Tony Lumpkin, and 
Lee Lewis, the harlequin of the theatre, for Gentleman Smith 
in Young Marlow; and both did justice to their parts. 

Great interest was taken by Goldsmith’s friends in the suc¬ 
cess of his piece. The rehearsals were attended by Johnson, 
Cradock, Murphy, Reynolds and his sister, and the whole Hor- 
neck connection, including, of course, the Jessamy Bride, 
whose presence may have contributed to flutter the anxious 
heart of the author. The rehearsals went off with great ap¬ 
plause, but that Colman attributed to the partiality of friends. 
He continued to croak, and refused to risk any expense in new 
scenery or dresses on a play which he was sure would prove a 
failure. 

The time was at hand for the first representation, and as yet 
the comedy was without a title. “We are all in labor for a 
name for Goldy’s play,” said Johnson, who, as usual, took a 
kind of fatherly protecting interest in poor Goldsmith’s affairs. 
The Old House a New Inn was thought of for a time, but still 
did not please. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed The Belle's 
Stratagem , an elegant title, but not considered applicable, the 
perplexities of the comedy being produced by the mistake of 
the hero, not the stratagem of the heroine. The name was 
afterward adopted by Mrs. Cowley for one of her comedies. 
The Mistakes of a Night was the title at length fixed upon, to 
which Goldsmith prefixed the words She Stoops to Conquer. 

The evil bodings of Colman still continued; they were even 
communicated in the box office to the servant of the Duke of 
Gloucester, who was sent to engage a box. Never did the play 
of a popular writer struggle into existence through more diffi¬ 
culties. 

In the meantime Foote’s Primitive Puppetshow, entitled the 
Handsome Housemaid , or Piety on Pattens , had been brought 


‘21‘2 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


out«gJ the Ilaymarket on the 15th of February. All the world, 
fashionable and unfashionable, had crowded to the theatre. 
The street was thronged with equipages — the doors were 
stormed by the mob. The burlesque was completely success¬ 
ful, and sentimental comedy received its quietus. Even Gar¬ 
rick, who had recently befriended it, now gave it a kick, as he 
saw it going down hill, and sent Goldsmith’s humorous pro¬ 
logue to help his comedy of the opposite school. Garrick and 
Goldsmith, however, were now on very cordial terms, to which 
the social meetings in the circle of the Hornecks and Bunburys 
may have contributed. 

On the 15th of March the new comedy was to be performed. 
Those who had stood up for its merits, and been irritated and 
disgusted by the treatment it had received from the manager, 
determined to muster their forces, and aid in giving it a good 
launch upon the town. The particulars of this confederation, 
and its triumphant success, are amusingly told by Cumberland 
in his memoirs. 

“We were not over sanguine of success, but perfectly de¬ 
termined to struggle hard for our author. We accordingly 
assembled our strength at the Shakespeare tavern, in a con¬ 
siderable body, for an early dinner, where Samuel Johnson 
took the chair at the head of a long table, and was the life and 
soul of the corps: the poet took post silently by his side, with 
the Burkes, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Caleb White- 
foord, and a phalanx of North British, predetermined applaud- 
ers, under the banner of Major Mills, all good men and true. 
Our illustrious president was in inimitable glee; and poor 
Goldsmith that day took all his raillery as patiently and com¬ 
placently as my friend Boswell would have done any day or 
every day of his life. In the meantime, we did not forget our 
duty; and though we had a better comedy going, in which 
Johnson was chief actor, we betook ourselves in good time to 
our separate and allotted posts, and waited the awful drawing 
up of the curtain. As our stations were preconcerted, so were 
our signals for plaudits arranged and determined upon in a 
manner that gave every one his cue where to look for them, 
and how to follow them up. 

“We had among us a very worthy and efficient member, 
long since lost to his friends and the world at large, Adam 
Drummond, of amiable memory, who was gifted by nature 
with the most sonorous, and at the same time, the most con¬ 
tagious laugh that ever echoed from the human lungs. The 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


213 


neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes was a whisnp to 
it; the whole thunder of the theatre could not drown it. **This 
kind and ingenious friend fairly forewarned us that he knew 
no more when to give his fire than the cannon did that was 
planted on a battery. He desired, therefore, to have a flapper 
at his elbow, and I had the honor to be deputed to that office. 
I planted him in an upper box, pretty nearly over the stage, in 
full view of the pit and galleries, and perfectly well situated to 
give the echo all its play through the hollows and recesses of 
the theatre. The success of our manoeuvre was complete. 
All eyes were upon Johnson, who sat in a front row of a side 
box; and when he laughed, everybody thought themselves 
warranted to roar. In the meantime, my friend followed 
signals with a rattle so irresistibly comic that, when he had 
repeated it several times, the attention of the spectators was so 
engrossed by his person and performances, that the progress 
of the play seemed likely to become a secondary object, and I 
found it prudent to insinuate to him that he might halt his 
music without any prejudice to the author; but alas! it was 
now too late to rein him in; he had laughed upon my signal 
where he found no joke, and now, unluckily, he fancied that 
he found a joke in almost everything that was said; so that 
nothing in nature could be more mal-apropos than some of 
his bursts every now and then were. These were dangerous 
moments, for the pit began to take umbrage.; but we carried 
our point through, and triumphed not only over Colman’s 
judgment, but our own. ” 

Much of this statement has been condemned as exaggerated 
or discolored. Cumberland’s memoirs have generally been 
characterized as partaking of romance, and in the present in¬ 
stance he had particular motives for tampering with the truth. 
He was a dramatic writer himself, jealous of the success of a 
rival, and anxious to have it attributed to the private manage¬ 
ment of friends. According to various accounts, public and 
private, such management was unnecessary, for the piece was 
‘‘received throughout with the greatest acclamations.” 

Goldsmith in the present instance, had not dared, as on a 
former occasion, to be present at the first performance. He 
had been so overcome by his apprehensions that, at the pre¬ 
paratory dinner he could hardly utter a word, and was so 
choked that he could not swallow a mouthful. When his 
friends trooped to the theatre, he stole away to St. James’ 
Park: there he was found by a friend between seven and eight 


214 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


o’clock, wandering up and down the Mall like a troubled spirit. 
With difficulty he was persuaded to go to the theatre, where 
his presence might be important should any alteration be 
necessary. He arrived at the opening of the fifth act, and 
made his way behind the scenes. Just as he entered there was 
a slight hiss at the improbability of Tony Lumpkin’s trick on 
his mother, in persuading her she was forty miles oft', on Crack* 
skull Common, though she had been trundled about on her 
own grounds. “What’s that? what’s that!” cried Goldsmith 
to the manager, in great agitation. “Pshaw! Doctor,” replied 
Colman, sarcastically, ‘ ‘ don’t be frightened at a squib, when 
we’ve been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder!” 
Though of a most forgiving nature Goldsmith did not easily 
forget this ungracious and ill-timed sally. 

If Colman was indeed actuated by the paltry motives as- 
scribed to him in his treatment of this play, he was most am¬ 
ply punished by its success, and by the taunts, epigrams, and 
censures levelled at him through the press, in which his false 
prophecies were jeere. ^ • bis critical judgment called in ques¬ 
tion: and he was op?nJv taxed Avith literary jealousy. So 
galling and onremftting was jiie fire, that lie at length wrote 
to Goldsmith entreating him ‘ ,o take him off the rack of the 
newspapers;” in tar meantime, to escape the laugh that Avas 
raised abom him in the theatrical world of London, he took 
refuge in th during the triumphant career of the comedy. 

The folloAvmg is one of the many squibs which assailed the 
ears of the manage:; 

To George Colman , Esq. 

ON THE SUCCESS OF DR. GOLDSMITH’S NEW COMEDY. 

“ Come. Coley, doff those mourning weeds, 

Nor thus with jokes tx, flaram’d; 

Tho’ Goldsmith’s present play succeeds, 

His next may still be damm’d. 

As this has scaped without a fall, 

To sink his next prepare: 

New actors hire from Wapping Wall, 

And dresses from Rag Fair. 

For scenes let tatter'd blankets fly, 

The prologue Kelly write ; 4 

Then swear again the piece must die 
Before the author’s night. 

Should these tricks fail, the lucky elf, 

To bring to lasting shame, 

E'en write the best you can yourself, 

And print it in his name. ' 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


215 


The solitary hiss, which had startled Goldsmith, was as¬ 
cribed by some of the newspaper scribblers to Cumberland 
himself, who was ‘ £ manifestly miserable” at the delight of the 
audience, or to Ossian Macpherson, who was hostile to the 
whole Johnson clique, or to Goldsmith’s dramatic rival, Kelly. 
The following is-one of the epigrams which appeared: 

“ At Dr. Goldsmith’s merry play, 

All the spectators laugh, they say: 

The assertion, sir, I must deny, 

For Cumberland and Kelly cry. 

Ride, si scipis." 

Another, addressed to Goldsmith, alludes to Kelly’s early 
apprenticeship to stay-making: 

“ If Kelly finds fault with the shape of your muse, 

And thinks that too loosely it plays, 

He surely, dear Doctor, will never refuse 
To make it a new Pair of Stays /” 

Cradock had returned to the country before the production 
of the play; the following letter, written just after the per¬ 
formance, gives an additional picture of the thorns which be¬ 
set an author in the path of theatrical literature: 

“My dear Sir: The play has met with a success much be¬ 
yond your expectations or mine. 1 thank you sincerely for 
your epilogue, which, however, could not be used, but with 
your permission shall be printed. The story in short is this. 
Murphy sent me rather the outline of an epilogue than an 
epilogue, which was to be sung by Miss Catley, and which she 
approved; Mrs. Bulkley hearing this, insisted on throwing up 
her part” (Miss Hardcastle) “unless, according to the custom 
of the theatre she were permitted to speak the epilogue. In 
this embarrassment I thought of making a quarrelling epilogue 
between Catley and her, debating who should speak the 
epilogue: but then Mrs. Catley refused after I had taken the 
trouble of drawing it out. I was then at a loss indeed; an 
epilogue was to be made, and for none but Mrs. Bulkley. I 
made one, and Colman thought it too bad to be spoken: I was 
obliged, therefore, to try a fourth time, and I made a very 
mawkish thing, as you’ll shortly see. Such is the history of 
my stage adventures, and which I have at last done with. I 
cannot help saying that I am very sick of the stage; and 
though I believe I shall get three tolerable benefits, yet I shall, 
on the whole, be a loser, even in a pecuniary light; my ease 
and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation. 


216 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


“I am, my dear Cradock, your obliged and obedient ser 
vant, 

“Oliver Goldsmith. 

“ P.S. Present my most humble respects to Mrs. Cradock.” 

Johnson, who had taken such a conspicuous part in promot¬ 
ing the interests of poor “ Goldy,” was triumphant at the suc¬ 
cess of the piece. “I know of no comedy for many years,” 
said he, “that has so much exhilarated an audience; that has 
answered so much the great end of comedy—making an au¬ 
dience merry.” 

Goldsmith was happy, also, in gleaning applause from less 
authoritative sources. Northcote, the painter, then a youth¬ 
ful pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Ralph, Sir Joshua’s con¬ 
fidential man, had taken their stations in the gallery to lead 
the applause in that quarter. Goldsmith asked Northcote’s 
opinion of the play. The youth modestly declared he could 
not presume to judge in such matters. “Did it make you 
laugh?” “Oh, exceedingly!” “That is all I require,” replied 
Goldsmith; and rewarded him for his criticism by box-tickets 
for his first benefit night. 

The comedy was immediately put to press, and dedicated to 
Johnson in the following grateful and affectionate terms: 

“ In inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean 
so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some 
honor to inform the public, that I have lived many years in 
intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind 
also to inform them that the greatest wit may be found in a 
character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.” 

The copyright was transferred to Mr. Newberry, according 
to agreement, whose profits on the sale of the work far ex¬ 
ceeded the debts for which the author in his perplexities had 
pre-engaged it. The sum which accrued to Goldsmith from his 
benefit nights afforded but a slight palliation of his pecuniary 
difficulties. His friends, while they exulted in his success, 
little knew of his continually increasing embarrassments, and 
of the anxiety of mind which kept tasking his pen while it im¬ 
paired the ease and freedom of spirit necessary to felicitous 
composition- 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


217 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

A NEWSPAPER ATTACK—THE EVANS AFFRAY—JOHNSON’S COM¬ 
MENT. 

The triumphant success of She Stoops to Conquer brought 
iorth, of course, those carpings and cavillings of underling 
scribblers, which are the thorns and briers in the path of suc¬ 
cessful authors. 

Goldsmith, though easily nettled by attacks of the kind, 
was at present too well satisfied with the reception of his 
comedy to heed them; but the following anonymous letter, 
which appeared in a public paper, was not to be taken with 
equal equanimity: 


“ For the London Packet. 

“TO DR. GOLDSMITH. 

‘ ‘ Vous vous noyez par vanite. 

“Sir: The happy knack which you have learned of puffing 
your own compositions, provokes me to come forth. You 
have not been the editor of newspapers and magazines not to 
discover the trick of literary humbug ; but the gauze is so thin 
than the very foolish part of the world see through it, and dis¬ 
cover the doctor’s monkey face and cloven foot. Your poetic 
vanity is as unpardonable as your personal. Would man be¬ 
lieve it, and will woman bear it, to be told that for hours the 
great Goldsmith will stand surveying his grotesque orang¬ 
outang’s figure in a pier-glass ? Was but the lovely II - k as 
much enamored, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in 
vain. But your vanity is preposterous. How will this same 
bard of Bedlam ring the changes in the praise of Goldy! 
But what has he to be either proud or vain of ? ‘ The Trav¬ 
eller ’ is a flimsy poem, built upon false principles—principles 
diametrically opposite to liberty. What is The Good-Natured 
Man but a poor, water-gruel dramatic dose ? What is ‘ The 
Deserted Village ’ but a pretty poem of easy numbers, without 
fancy, dignity, genius, or fire ? And, pray, what may be the 
last speaking pantomime , so praised by the doctor himself, but 
an incoherent piece of stuff, the figure of a woman with a fish’s 


218 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


tail, without plot, incident, or intrigue? We are made to 
laugh at stale, dull jokes, wherein we mistake pleasantry for 
wit, and grimace for humor; wherein every scene is unnatural 
and inconsistent with the rules, the laws of nature and of the 
drama; viz., two gentlemen come to a man of fortune’s house, 
eat, drink, etc., and take it for an inn. The one is intended 
as a lover for the daughter; he talks with her for some hours; 
and, when he sees her again in a different dress, he treats her 
as a bar-girl, and swears she squinted. He abuses the master 
of the house, and threatens to kick him out of his own doors. 
The squire, whom we are told is to be.a fool, proves to be the 
most sensible being of the piece; and he makes out a whole act 
by bidding his mother lie close behind a bush, persuading her 
that his father, her own husband, is a highwayman, and that 
he has come to cut their throats, and, to give his cousin an 
opportunity to go off, he drives his mother over hedges, 
ditches, and through ponds. There is not, sweet, sucking 
Johnson, a natural stroke in the whole play but the young 
fellow’s giving the stolen jewels to the mother, supposing her 
to be the landlady. That Mr. Colman did no justice to this 
piece, I honestly allow; that he told all his friends it would be 
damned, I positively aver; and, from such ungenerous insinu¬ 
ations, without a dramatic merit, it rose to public notice, and 
it is now the ton to go and see it, though I never saw a person 
that either liked it or approved it, any more than the absurd 
plot of Home’s tragedy of Alonzo. Mr. Goldsmith, correct 
your arrogance, reduce your vanity, and endeavor to believe, 
as a man, you are of the plainest sort; and as an author, but a 
mortal piece of mediocrity. 

* Brise le miroir infidele 
Qui vous cache la v6rit6. 

“ Tom Tickle.” 

It would be difficult to devise a letter more calculated to 
wound the peculiar sensibilities of Goldsmith. The attacks 
upon him as an author, though annoying enough, he could 
have tolerated; but then the allusion to his “grotesque” per¬ 
son, to his studious attempts to adorn it; and above all, to his 
being an unsuccessful admirer of the lovely H—k (the Jessamy 
Bride), struck rudely upon the most sensitive part of his 
highly sensitive nature. The paragraph, it was said, was 
first pointed out to him by an officious friend, an Irishman, 
who told him ** bound in honor to resent it; but he 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


219 


needed no such prompting. He was in a high state of excite¬ 
ment and indignation, and accompanied by his friend, who is 
said to have been a Captain Higgins, of the marines, he re¬ 
paired to Paternoster Row, to the shop of Evans, the pub¬ 
lisher, whom he supposed to be the editor of the paper. Evans 
was summoned by his shopman from an adjoining room. 
Goldsmith announced his name. “I have called,” added he, 
“ in consequence of a scurrilous attack made upon me, and an 
unwarrantable liberty taken with the name of a young lady. 
As for myself, I care little; but her name must not be sported 
with.” 

Evans professed utter ignorance of the matter, and said he 
would speak to the editor. He stooped to examine a file of 
the paper, in search of the offensive article; whereupon Gold¬ 
smith’s friend gave him a signal, that now was a "favorable 
moment for the exercise of his cane. The hint was taken as 
quick as given, and the cane was vigorously applied to the 
back of the stooping publisher. The latter rallied in an in¬ 
stant, and, being a stout, high-blooded Welshman, returned 
the blows with interest. A lamp hanging overhead was 
broken, and sent down a shower of oil upon the combatants; 
but the battle raged with unceasing fury. The shopman ran 
off for a constable; but Dr. Kendrick, who happened to be in 
the adjacent room, sallied forth, interfered between the com¬ 
batants, and put an end to the affray. He conducted Gold¬ 
smith to a coach, in exceedingly battered and tattered plight, 
and accompanied him home, soothing him with much mock 
commiseration, though he was generally suspected, and on 
good grounds, to be the author of the libel. 

Evans immediately instituted a suit against Goldsmith for 
an assault, but was ultimately prevailed upon to compromise 
the matter, the poet contributing fifty pounds to the Welsh 
charity. 

Newspapers made themselves, as may well be supposed, ex¬ 
ceedingly merry with the combat. Some censured him severely 
for invading the sanctity of a man’s own house; others accused 
him of having, in his former capacity of editor of a maga¬ 
zine, been guilty of the very offences that he now resented in 
others. This drew from him the following vindication: 

“ To the Public. 

“ Lest it should be supposed that I have been willing to 
correct in others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


220 

I beg leave to declare, that, in all my life, I never wrote or 
dictated a single paragraph, letter, or essay in a newspaper, 
except a few moral essays under the character of a Chinese, 
about ten years ago, in the Ledger , and a letter, to which I 
signed my name in the St. James' Chronicle. If the liberty of 
the press, therefore, has been abused, I have had no hand in it„ 

“I have always considered the press as the protector of our 
freedom, as a watchful guardian, capable of uniting the weak 
against the encroachments of power. What concerns the pub¬ 
lic most properly admits of a public discussion. But, of late, 
the press has turned from defending public interest to making 
inroads upon private life; from combating the strong to over¬ 
whelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its 
abuse, and the protector has become the tyrant of the people. 
In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow 
the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from 
principle, and the weak from fear; till at last every rank of 
mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with 
security from insults. 

‘ ‘ How to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all are 
indiscriminately abused, and by which vice consequently es¬ 
capes in the general censure, I am unable to tell; all I could 
wish is that, as the law gives us no protection against the 
injury, so it should give caluminators ho shelter after having 
provoked correction. The insults which we receive before the 
public, by being more open, are the more distressing; by 
treating them with silent contempt we do not pay a sufficient 
deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to legal 
redress we too often expose the weakness of the law, which 
only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve 
us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as the 
guardian of the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence 
can extend, should endeavor to prevent its licentiousness be¬ 
coming at last the grave of its freedom. 

“ Oliver Goldsmith.” 

Boswell, who had just arrived in town, met with this article 
in a newspaper which he found at Hr. Johnson’s. The doctor 
was from home at the time, and Bozzy and Mrs. Williams, in 
a critical conference over the letter, determined from the style 
that it must have been written by the lexicographer himself. 
The latter on his return soon undeceived them. ‘ ‘ Sir, ” said he 
to Boswell, “ Goldsmith would no more have asked me to have 


OLIVER GOLD SMITH 


221 


wrote such a thing as that for him, than he would have asked 
me to feed him with a spoon, or do anything else that denoted 
his imbecility. Sir, had he shown it to any one friend, he 
would not have been allowed to publish it. He has, indeed, 
done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done. I sup¬ 
pose he has been so much elated with the success of his new 
comedy, that he has thought everything that concerned him 
must be of importance to the public.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

BOSWELL IN HOLY WEEK—DINNER AT OGLETHORPE’S—DINNER 
AT PAOLl’S—THE POLICY OF TRUTH—GOLDSMITH AFFECTS IN¬ 
DEPENDENCE OF ROYALTY—PAOLl’S COMPLIMENT—JOHNSON’S 
EULOGIUM ON THE FIDDLE—QUESTION ABOUT SUICIDE—BOS¬ 
WELL’S SUBSERVIENCY. 

The return of Boswell to town to his task of noting down 
the conversations of Johnson enables us to glean from his 
journal some scanty notices of Goldsmith. It was now Holy 
Week, a time during which Johnson was particularly solemn 
in his manner and strict in his devotions. Boswell, who was 
the imitator of the great moralist in everything, assumed, of 
course, an extra devoutness on the present occasion. ‘ ‘ He had 
an odd mock solemnity of tone and manner,” said Miss Burney 
(afterward Madame D’Arblay), “which he had acquired from 
constantly thinking and imitating Dr. Johnson. ” It would seem 
that he undertook to deal out some second-hand homilies, a la 
Johnson , for the edification of Goldsmith during Holy Week. 
The poet, whatever might be his religious feeling, had no dis¬ 
position to be schooled by so shallow an apostle. “Sir,” said 
he in reply, “ as I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my 
coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.” 

Boswell treasured up the reply in his memory or his memo¬ 
randum book. A few days afterward, the 9th of April, he 
kept Good Friday with Dr. Johnson, in orthodox style; break¬ 
fasted with him on tea and crossbuns; went to church with 
him morning and evening; fasted in the interval, and read 
with him in the Greek Testament: then, in the piety of his 
heart, complained of the sore rebuff he had met with in the 



222 


0 LI VER G OLD SMITH. 


course of his religious exhortations to the poet, and lamented 
that the latter should indulge in “this loose way of talking.” 
“Sir,” replied Johnson, “Goldsmith knows nothing—he has 
made up his mind about nothing.” 

This reply seems to have gratified the lurking jealousy of 
Boswell, and he has recorded it in his journal. Johnson, how¬ 
ever, with respect to Goldsmith, and indeed with respect to 
everybody else, blew hot as well as cold, according to the hu¬ 
mor he was in. Boswell, who was astonished and piqued at 
the continually increasing celebrity of the poet, observed some 
time after to Johnson, in a tone of surprise, that Goldsmith had 
acquired more fame than all the officers of the last war who 
were not generals. “Why, sir,” answered Johnson, his old 
feeling of good-will working uppermost, “you will find ten 
thousand fit to do what they did, before you find one to do 
what Goldsmith has done. You must consider that a tiling is 
valued according to its rarity. A pebble that paves the street 
is in itself more useful than the diamond upon a lady’s finger.” 

On the 13th of April we find Goldsmith and Johnson at the 
table of old General Oglethorpe, discussing the question of the 
degeneracy of the human race. Goldsmith asserts the fact, 
and attributes it to the influence of luxury. Johnson denies 
the fact; and observes that, even admitting it, luxury could 
not be the cause. It reached but a small proportion of 
the human race. Soldiers, on sixpence a day, could not in¬ 
dulge in luxuries; the poor and laboring classes, forming the 
great mass of mankind, were out of its sphere. Wherever it 
could reach them, it strengthened them and rendered them 
prolific. The conversation was not of particular force or point 
as reported by Boswell; the dinner party was a very small 
one, in which there was no provocation to intellectual display. 

After dinner they took tea with the ladies, where we find 
poor Goldsmith happy and at home, singing Tony Lumpkin’s 
song of the “Three Jolly Pigeons,” and another, called the 
“ Humors of Ballamaguery,” to a very pretty Irish tune. It 
was to have been introduced in She Stoops to Conquer , but was 
left out, as the actress who played the heroine could not sing. 

It was in these genial moments that the sunshine of Gold¬ 
smith’s nature would break out, and he would say and do a 
thousand whimsical and agreeable things that made him: the 
life of the strictly social circle. Johnson, with whom conver¬ 
sation was everything, used to judge Goldsmith too much by 
his own colloquial standard, and undervalue him for being less 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


223 


provided than himself with acquired facts, the ammunition of 
the tongue and often the mere lumber of the memory; others 
however, valued him for the native felicity of his thoughts* 
however carelessly expressed, and for certain good-fellow 
qualities, less calculated to dazzle than to endear. ‘ 4 It is amaz¬ 
ing,” said Johnson one day, after he himself had been talking 
like an oracle; “ it is amazing how little Goldsmith knows; he 
seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than anyone 
else.” “Yet,” replied Sir Joshua Reynolds, with affectionate 
promptness, “ there is no man whose company is more liked.” 

Two or three days after the dinner at General Oglethorpe’s, 
Goldsmith met Johnson again at the table of General Paoli, 
the hero of Corsica. Martinelli, of Florence, author of an 
Italian History of England, was among the guests; as was 
Boswell, to whom we are indebted for minutes of the conversa¬ 
tion which took place. The question was debated whether 
Martinelli should continue his history down to4fiat day. “To 
be sure he should, ” said Goldsmith. ‘‘ No, sir;” cried Johnson, 
“it would give great offence. He would have to tell of almost 
all the living great what they did not wish told.” Goldsmith. 
—“It may, perhaps, be necessary for a native to be more cau¬ 
tious ; but a foreigner, w T ho comes among us without prejudice, 
may be considered as holding the place of a judge, and may 
speak his mind freely.” Johnson.—“ Sir, a foreigner, when he 
sends a work from the press, ought to be on his guafird against 
catching the error and mistaken enthusiasm of the people 
among whom he happens to be.” Goldsmith.—“ Sir, he wants 
only to sell his history, and to tell truth; one an honest, the 
other a laudable motive.” Johnson.—“Sir, they are both 
laudable motives. It is laudable in a man to wish to live by 
his labors; but he should write so as he may live by them, not 
so as he may be knocked on the head. I would advise him to 
be at Calais before he publishes his history of the present age. 
A foreigner who attaches himself to a political party in this 
country is in the worst state that can be imagined; he is looked 
upon as a mere intermeddler. A native may do it from inter¬ 
est.” Boswell.—“Or principle.” Goldsmith.—“There are 
people who tell a hundred political lies every day, and are not 
hurt by it. Surely, then, one may tell truth with perfect 
safety.” Johnson.—“Why, sir, in the first place, he who tells 
a hundred lies has disarmed the force of his lies. But, besides, 
a man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one 
truth which he doo« not wish to be told.” Goldsmith.—“ For 


224 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


my part, I’d tell the truth, and shame the devil.” Johnson.— 
“Yes, sir, but the devil will be angry. I wish to shame the 
devil as much as you do, but I should choose to be out of the 
reach of his claws.” Goldsmith.—“ His claws can do you no 
hurt where you have the shield of truth.” 

This last reply was one of Goldsmith’s lucky hits, and closed 
the argument in his favor. 

“We talked,” writes Boswell, “ of the king’s coming to see 
Goldsmith’s new play.” “ I wish he would,” said Goldsmith, 
adding, however, with an affected indifference, “Not that it 
would do me the least good.” “ Well, then,” cried Johnson, 
laughing, “let us say it would do him good. No, sir, this affec¬ 
tation will not pass; it is mighty idle. In such a state as ours, 
who would not wish to please the chief magistrate?” 

“I do wish to please him,” rejoined Goldsmith. “I remem¬ 
ber a line in Dry den: 

* 

‘And every poet is the monarch’s friend,’ 

it ought to be reversed.” “Nay,” said Johnson, “there are 
finer lines in Dry den on this subject: 

‘ For colleges on bounteous kings depend, 

And never rebel was to arts a friend.’ ” 

General Paoli observed that “successful rebels might be.” 
“Happy rebellions,” interjected Martinelli. “We have no 
such phrase, ” cried Goldsmith. ‘ ‘ But have you not the thing?” 
asked Paoli. “Yes,” replied Goldsmith, “all our happy revo¬ 
lutions. They have hurt our constitution, and will hurt it, till 
we mend it by another happy revolution.” This was a sturdy 
sally of Jacobitism that quite surprised Boswell, but must have 
been relished by Johnson. 

General Paoli mentioned a passage in the play, which had 
been construed into a compliment to a lady of distinction, 
whose marriage with the Duke of Cumberland had excited the 
strong disapprobation of the king as a mesaillance. Boswell, 
to draw Goldsmith out, pretended to think the compliment 
unintentional. The poet smiled and hesitated. The general 
came to his relief. “Monsieur Goldsmith,” said he, “est 
eomme la mer, qui jette des perles et beaucoup d’autres belles 
choses, sans s’en appercevoir” (Mr. Goldsmith is like the sea, 
which casts forth pearls and many other beautiful things with¬ 
out perceiving it). 

“Tres-bien dit, et tres-elegamment” (very well said, and 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. ’ 225 

very elegantly), exclaimed Goldsmith; delighted with so beau¬ 
tiful a compliment from such a quarter. 

Johnson spoke disparagingly of the learning of a Mr. Harris, 
of Salisbury, and doubted his being a good Grecian. “He 
is what is much better,” cried Goldsmith, with prompt good¬ 
nature, “ he is a worthy, humane man.” “ Nay, sir,” rejoined 
the logical Johnson, ‘ ‘ that is not to the purpose of our argu¬ 
ment ; that will prove that he can play upon the fiddle as well 
as Giardini, as that he is an eminent Grecian.” Goldsmith 
found he had got into a scrape, and seized upon Giardini to 
help him out of it. “The greatest musical performers,” said 
he, dexterously turning the conversation, “have but small 
emoluments; Giardini, I am told, does not get above seven 
hundred a year.” “That is indeed but little for a man to get,” 
observed Johnson, “ who does best that which so many endea¬ 
vor to do. There is nothing, I think, in which the power of 
art is shown so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all other 
things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a 
bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, 
but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a 
box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and fiddlestick, 
and he can do nothing.” 

This, upon the whole, though reported by the one-sided Bos¬ 
well, is a tolerable specimen of the conversations of Goldsmith 
and Johnson; the former heedless, often illogical, always on 
the kind-hearted side of the question, and prone to redeem him¬ 
self by lucky hits; the latter closely argumentative, studiously 
sententious, often profound, and sometimes laboriously pro¬ 
saic. 

They had an argument a few days later at Mr. Thrale’s table, 
on the subject of suicide. “Do you think, sir,” said Boswell, 
“that all w T ho commit suicide are mad?” “Sir,” replied John¬ 
son, 11 they are not often universally disordered in their intel¬ 
lects, but one passion presses so upon them that they yield to 
it, and commit suicide, as a passionate man will stab another. 
I have often thought,” added he, “that after a man has taken 
the resolution to kill himself, it is not courage in him to do 
anything, however desperate, because he has nothing to fear.” 
“ I don't see that,” observed Goldsmith. “ Nay, but, my dear 
sir,” rejoined Johnson, “why should you not see what every 
one else does?” “It is,” replied Goldsmith, “for fear of some¬ 
thing that he has resolved to kill himself; and will not that 
timid disposition restrain him?” “It does not signify,” pur- 


226 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


sued Johnson, “that the fear of something made him resolve; 
it is upon the state of his mind, after the resolution is taken, 
that I argue. Suppose a man either from fear, or pride, or 
conscience, or whatever motive, has resolved to kill himself; 
when once the resolution is taken he has nothing to fear. He 
may then go and take the King of Prussia by the nose at the 
head of his army. He cannot fear the rack who is determined 
to kill himself.” Boswell reports no more of the discussion, 
though Goldsmith might have continued it with advantage: 
for the very timid disposition, which through fear of some¬ 
thing, was impelling the man to commit suicide, might restrain 
him from an act, involving the punishment of the rack, more 
terrible to him than death itself. 

It is to be regretted in all these reports by Boswell, we have 
scarcely anything but the remarks of Johnson; it is only by 
accident that he now and then gives us the observations of 
others, when they are necessary to explain or set off those of 
his hero. “When in that presence” says Miss Burney, “he 
was unobservant, if not contemptuous of every one else. In 
truth, when he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore 
even answering anything that was said, or attending to any¬ 
thing that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest sound 
from that voice, to which he paid such exclusive, though mer¬ 
ited homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the atten¬ 
tion which it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. 
His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leaned his ear almost on 
the shoulder of the doctor; and his mouth dropped open to 
catch every syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed 
not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss 
a breathing; as if hoping from it latently, or mystically, some 
information.” 

On one occasion the Doctor detected Boswell, or Bozzy, as 
he called him, eavesdropping behind his chair, as he was con¬ 
versing with Miss Burney at Mr. Thrale’s table. “What are 
you doing there, sir?” cried he, turning round angrily, and 
clapping his hand upon his knee. “ Go to the table, sir.” 

Boswell obeyed with an air of affright and submission, which 
raised a smile on every face. Scarce had he taken his seat, 
however, at a distance, than impatient to get again at the side 
of Johnson, he rose and was running off in quest of something 
to show him, when the doctor roared after him authoritatively, 
“What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before 
the cloth is removed? Come back to your place, sir;”—and 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


227 

the obsequious spaniel did as he was commanded. 11 Running 
about in the middle of meals!” muttered the doctor, pursing 
his mouth at the same time to restrain his rising risibility. 

Boswell got another rebuff from Johnson, which would have 
demolished any other man. He had been teasing him with 
many direct questions, such as What did you do, sir? What 
did you say, sir? until the great philologist became perfectly 
enraged. U I will not be put to the question!” roared he. 
“Don’t you consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a 
gentleman? I will not be baited with what and why; What is 
this? What is that? Why is a cow’s tail long? Why is a fox’s 
tail bushy?” “Why, sir,” replied pil-garlick, “you are so 
good that i venture to trouble you.” “ Sir,” replied Johnson, 
“my being so good is no reason why you should be so ill” 
“ You have but two topics, sir;” exclaimed he on another oc¬ 
casion, “yourself and me, and I am sick of both.” 

Boswell’s inveterate disposition to toad was a sore cause of 
mortification to his father, the old laird of Auchinleck (or Af¬ 
fleck). He had been annoyed by his extravagant devotion to 
Paoli, hut then he was something of a military hero; but this 
tagging at the heels of Dr. Johnson, whom he considered a 
kind of pedagogue, set his Scotch blood in a ferment. “ There’s 
nae hope for Jamie, mon,” said he to a friend; “Jamie is gaen 
clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He’s done wi’ Paoli; 
he’s off wi’ the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whoso 
tail do you think he has pinn’d himself to now, mon? A do¬ 
minie, mon; an auld dominie: he keeped a schiile, and cau’d 
it an acaadamy.” 

We shall show in the next chapter that Jamie’s devotion to 
the dominie did not go unrewarded. 


CHAPTER XL. 

CHANGES IN THE LITERARY CLUB—JOHNSON’S OBJECTION TO GAR¬ 
RICK—ELECTION OF BOSWELL. 

The Literary Club (as we have termed the club in Gerard 
Street, though it took that name some time later) had now 
being in existence several years. Johnson was exceedingly 
chary at first of its exclusiveness, and opposed to its being 
augmented in number. Not long after its institution, Sir 



22S 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. “I like it 
much,” said little David, briskly; “ I think I shall be of you.” 
“ When Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr. Johnson,” says Bos¬ 
well, “ he was much displeased with the actor’s conceit. 
‘ He'll be of us f ' growled he. ‘ How does he know we will 
pei'mit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold 
such language.’ ” 

When Sir John Hawkins spoke favorably of Garrick’s pre¬ 
tensions, “Sir,” replied Johnson, “he will disturb us by his 
buffoonery.” In the same spirit he declared to Mr. Thrale, 
that if Garrick should apply for admission, he would black-ball 
him. “ Who, sir?” exclaimed Thrale, with surprise; “ Mr. Gar¬ 
rick—your friend, your companion—black-ball him!” “ Why, 

sir,” replied Johnson, “I love my little David dearly - better 
than all or any of his flatterers do; but surely one ought to sit 
in a society like ours, 


“ ‘Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player.’ ” 


The exclusion from the club was a sore mortification to Gar¬ 
rick, though he bore it without complaining. He could not 
help continually to ask questions about it—what was going on 
there—whether he was ever the subject of conversation. By 
degrees the rigor of the club relaxed: some of the members 
grew negligent. Beauclerc lost his right of membership by 
neglecting to attend. On his marriage, however, with Lady 
Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, and 
recently divorced from Viscount Bolingbroke, he had claimed 
and regained his seat in the club. The number of members 
had likewise been augmented. The proposition to increase it 
originated with Goldsmith. “It would give,” he thought, “an 
agreeable variety to their meetings; for there can b© nothing 
new among us,” said he; “we have travelled over each other’s 
minds.” Johnson was piqued at the suggestion. “Sir,” said 
he, “you have not travelled over my mind, I promise you.” 
Sir Joshua', less confident in the exhaustless fecundity of his 
mind, felt and acknowledged the force of Goldsmith’s suggest¬ 
ion. Several new members, therefore, had been added; the 
first, to his great joy, was David Garrick. Goldsmith, who 
was now on cordial terms with him, had zealously promoted 
his election, and Johnson had given it his warm approbation. 
Another new member was Beaucierc’s friend, Lord Charle- 
mont; and a still more important one. was Mr., afterward Sir 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 229 

William Jones, the famous Orientalist, at that time a young 
lawyer of the Temple and a distinguished scholar. 

To the great astonishment of the club, Johnson now proposed 
his devoted follower, Boswell, as a member. He did it in a 
note addressed to Goldsmith, who presided on the evening of 
the 23d of April. The nomination was seconded by Beauclerc. 
According to the rules of the club, the ballot would take place 
at the next meeting (on the 30th); there was an intervening 
•week, therefore, in which to discuss the pretensions of the can¬ 
didate. We may easily imagine the discussions that took 
place. Boswell had made himself absurd in such a variety of 
ways, that the very idea of his admission was exceedingly irk¬ 
some to some of the members. “The honor of being elected 
into the Turk’s Head Club, ” said the Bishop of St. Asaph, ‘ ‘ is 
not inferior to that of being representative of Westminster and 
Surreywhat had Boswell done to merit such an honor? what 
chance had he of gaining it? The answer was simple: he had 
been the persevering worshipper, if not sycophant of Johnson. 
The great lexicographer had a heart to be won by apparent af¬ 
fection ; he stood forth authoritatively in support of his vassal. 
If asked to state the merits of the candidate, he summed them 
up in an indefinite but comprehensive word of his own coining; 
he was clubable. He moreover gave significant hints that if 
Boswell were kept out he should oppose the admission of any 
other candidate. No further opposition was made; in fact 
none of the members had been so fastidious and exclusive in 
regard to the club as Johnson himself; and if he were pleased, 
they were easily satisfied; besides, they knew that with all his 
faults, Boswell was a cheerful companion, and possessed lively 
social qualities. 

On Friday, when the ballot was to take place, Beauclerc 
gave a dinner, at his house in the Adelphi, where Boswell met 
several of the members who were favorable to his election. 

? After dinner the latter adjourned to the club, leaving Boswell 
in company with Lady Di Beauclerc until the fate of his elect¬ 
ion should be known. He sat, he says, in a state of anxiety 
which even the charming conversation of Lady Di could not 
entirely dissipate. It was not long before tidings were brought 
of his election, and he was conducted to the place of meeting, 
where, beside the company he had met at dinner, Burke, Dr. 
Nugent, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Mr. William Jones were 
waiting to receive him. The club, notwithstanding all its 
learned dignity in the eyes of the world, could at times “uu« 


230 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


bend and play the fool” as well as less important bodies. 
Some of its jocose conversations have at times leaked out, and 
a society in which Goldsmith could venture to sing his song of 
“an old woman tossed in a blanket,” could not be so very staid 
in its gravity. We may suppose, therefore, the jokes that had 
been passing among the members while awaiting the arrival of 
Boswell. Beauclerc himself could not have repressed his dis¬ 
position for a sarcastic pleasantry. At least we have a right to 
presume all this from the conduct of Dr. Johnson himself. 

With all his gravity he possessed a deep fund of quiet hu¬ 
mor, and felt a kind of whimsical responsibility to protect the 
club from the absurd propensities of the very questionable 
associate he had thus inflicted on them. Bising, therefore, as 
Boswell entered, he advanced with a very doctorial air, placed 
himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a desk or pul¬ 
pit, and then delivered, ex cathedra , a mock solemn charge, 
pointing out the conduct expected from him as a good member 
of the club; what he was to do, and especially what he was to 
avoid; including in the latter, no doubt, all those petty, pry¬ 
ing, questioning, gossiping, babbling habits which had so often 
grieved the spirit of the lexicographer. It is to be regretted 
that Boswell has never thought proper to note down the par¬ 
ticulars of this charge, which, from the well known characters 
and positions of the parties, might have furnished a parallel to 
the noted charge of Launcelot Gobbo to his dog. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

PINNER AT PILLY’S —CONVERSATIONS ON NATURAL HISTORY—IN- 
TERMEDPLING OF BOSWELL — PISPUTE ABOUT TOLERATION — 
JOHNSON’S REBUFF TO GOLPSMITH—HIS APOLOGY—MAN-WOR¬ 
SHIP—POCTORS MAJOR ANP MINOR—A FAREWELL VISIT. 

A few days after the serio-comic scene of the elevation of 
Boswell into the Literary Club, we find that indefatigable 
biographer giving particulars of a dinner at the Dillys, book¬ 
sellers, in the Poultry, at which he met Goldsmith and John¬ 
son, with several other literary characters. His anecdotes of 
the conversation, of course, go to glorify Dr. Johnson; for, as 
he observes in his biography, “his conversation alone, or what 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


231 


led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this 
work.” Still on the present, as on other occasions, he gives 
unintentional and perhaps unavoidable gleams of Goldsmith’s 
good sense, which show that the latter only wanted a less pre¬ 
judiced and more impartial reporter, to put down the charge of 
colloquial incapacity so unjustly fixed upon him. The conver¬ 
sation turned upon the natural history of birds, a beautiful 
subject, on which the poet, from his recent studies, his habits 
of observation, and his natural tastes, must have talked with 
instruction and feeling; yet, though we have much of what 
Johnson said, we have only a casual remark or two of Gold¬ 
smith. One was on the migration of swallows, which he pro¬ 
nounced partial; “The stronger ones,” said he, “migrate, the 
others do not.” 

Johnson denied to the brute creation the faculty cf reason. 
“Birds,” said he, “build by instinct; they never improve; 
they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build.” 
“Yet we see,” observed Goldsmith, “ if you take away a bird’s 
nest with the eggs in it, she will make a slighter nest Shd lay 
again.” “ Sir”’ replied Johnson, “that is because at first she 
has full time, and makes her nest deliberately. In the case 
you mention, she is pressed to lay, and must, therefore, make 
her nest quickly, and consequently it will be slight.” “The 
nidification of birds,” rejoined Goldsmith, “is what is least 
known in natural history, though one of the most curious 
things in it.” While conversation was going on in this placid, 
agreeable and instructive manner, the eternal meddler and 
busy-body Boswell, must intrude, to put it in a brawl. The 
Dillys were dissenters; two of their guests were dissenting 
clergymen; another, Mr. Toplady, was a clergyman of the 
established church. Johnson, himself, was a zealous, uncom¬ 
promising churchman. None but a marplot like Boswell would 
have thought, on such an occasion, and in such company, to 
broach the subject of religious toleration; but, as has been 
well observed, “it was his perverse inclination to introduce 
subjects that he hoped would produce difference and debate.” 
In this present instance he gained his point. An animated 
dispute immediately arose, in which, according to Boswell’s 
report, Johnson monopolized the greater part of the conversa¬ 
tion ; not always treating the dissenting clergymen with the 
greatest courtesy, and even once wounding the feelings of the 
mild and amiable Bennet Langton by his harshness. 

Goldsmith mingled a little in the dispute and with some ad- 


232 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


vantage, but was cut short by flat contradictions when most 
in the right. He sat for a time silent but impatient under 
such overbearing dogmatism, though Boswell, with his usual 
misinterpretation, attributes his “restless agitation’ 7 to a wish 
to got in and shine. “Finding himself excluded,” continues 
Boswell, “ he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for a 
tune with it in his hand, like a gamester, who, at the end of a 
long night, lingers for a little while to see if he can have a 
favorable opportunity to finish with success.” Once he was 
beginning to speak when he was overpowered by the loud 
voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and 
did not perceive his attempt; whereupon he threw down, sis it 
were, his hat and his argument, and, darting an angry glanoe 
at Johnson, exclaimed in a bitter tone, “ Take it.” 

Just then one of the disputants was beginning to speak, 
when Johnson uttering some sound, as if about to interrupt 
him, Goldsmith, according to Boswell, seized the opportunity 
to vent his own envy and spleen under pretext of supporting 
another person. “Sir,” said he to Johnson, “ the gentleman 
has heard you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to 
hear him.” It was a reproof in the lexicographer’s own style, 
and he may have felt that he merited it; but he was not 
accustomed to be reproved. “Sir,” said he, sternly, “I was 
not interrupting the gentleman; I was only giving him a 
signal of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent. v Goldsmith 
made no reply, but after some time went away, having an¬ 
other engagement. 

That evening, as Boswell was on the way with Johnson and 
Langton to the club, he seized the occasion to make some dis¬ 
paraging remarks on Goldsmith, which he thought would just 
then be acceptable to the great lexicographer. 4 4 It was a 
pity,” he said, “that Goldsmith would, on every occasion, 
endeavor to shine, by which he so often exposed himself.” 
Langton contrasted him with Addison, who, content with the 
fame of his writings, acknowledged himself unfit for conversa¬ 
tion ; ^and on being taxed by a lady with silence in company, 
replied, 44 Madam, I have but nine pence in ready money, but 
I can draw for a thousand pounds.” To this Boswell rejoined 
that Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his cabinet, but was 
always taking out his purse. 44 Yes, sir,” chuckled Johnson, 
44 and that so often an empty purse.” 

By this time Johnson arrived at the club, however, his angry 
feelings had subsided, and bis native generosity and sense of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


23:3 


justice had got the uppermost. He found Goldsmith in com¬ 
pany with Burke, Garrick, and other members, but sitting 
silent and apart, “brooding,” as Boswell says, “over the 
reprimand he had received.” Johnson’s good heart yearned to¬ 
ward him; and knowing his placable nature, “ I’ll make Gold¬ 
smith forgive me,” whispered he; then, with a loud voice, 
“Dr. Goldsmith,” said he, “something passed to-day where 
you and I dined —I ask your pardon .” The ire of the poet was 
extinguished in an instant, and his grateful affection for the 
magnanimous though sometimes overbearing moralist rushed 
to his heart. “It must be much from you, sir,” said he, “that 
I take ill!” “And so,” adds Boswell, “the difference was 
over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldsmith 
rattled away as usual.” We do not think these stories tell to 
the poet’s disadvantage, even though related by Boswell. 

Goldsmith, with all his modesty, could not bo ignorant of 
his proper merit; and must have felt annoyed at times at 
being undervalued and elbowed aside by light-minded or dull 
men, in their blind and exclusive homage to the literary auto¬ 
crat. It was a fine reproof he gave to Boswell on one occasion, 
for talking of Johnston as entitled to the honor of exclusive 
superiority. “Sir, you are for making a monarchy what 
should be a republic.” On another occasion, when he was con¬ 
versing in company with great vivacity, and apparently to the 
satisfaction of those around him, an honest Swiss, who sat 
near, one George Michael Moser, keeper of the Royal Acad¬ 
emy, perceiving Dr. Johnson rolling himself as if about to 
speak, exclaimed, “Stay, stay! Toctor Shonson is going to 
say something.” “ And are you sure, sir,” replied Goldsmith, 
sharply, “that you can comprehend what he says?” 

This clever rebuke, which gives the main zest to the anec¬ 
dote, is omitted by Boswell, who probably did not perceive the 
point of it. 

He relates another anecdote of the kind, on the authority of 
Johnson himself. The latter and Goldsmith were one evening 
in company with the Rev. George Graham, a master of Eton, 
who, notwithstanding the sobriety of his cloth, had got intoxi¬ 
cated “ to about the pitch of looking at one man and talking 
to another.” “ Doctor,” cried he in an ecstacy of devotion and 
good-will, but goggling by mistake upon Goldsmith, ‘ ‘ I should 
be glad to see you at Eton.” “I shall be glad to wait upon 
you,” replied Goldsmith. “No, no!” cried the other eagerly, 
u Tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor, ’tis Doctor Major there.” 


234 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


“ You may easily conceive,” said Johnson in relating the anec¬ 
dote, “ what effect this had upon Goldsmith, who was irascible 
as a hornet.” The only comment, however, which he is said 
to have made, partakes more of quaint and dry humor than 
bitterness: ‘ ‘ That Graham, ” said he, ‘ ‘ is enough to make one 
commit suicide.” What more could he said to express the in¬ 
tolerable nuisance of a consummate bore % 

We have now given the last scenes between Goldsmith and 
Johnson which stand recorded by Boswell. The latter called 
on the poet a few days after the dinner at Dilly’s, to take 
leave of him prior to departing for Scotland; yet, even in this 
last interview, he contrives to get up'a charge of “jealousy 
and envy.” Goldsmith, he would fain persuade us, is very 
angry that Johnson is going to travel with him in Scotland; 
and endeavors to persuade him that he will be a dead weight 
“ to lug along through the Highlands and Hebrides.” Any one 
else, knowing the character and habits of Johnson, would 
have thought the same; and no one but Boswell would have 
supposed his office of bear-leader to the ursa major a thing to 
be envied.* 


* One of Peter Pindar’s (Dr. Wolcot) most amusing jeax d' esprit is his congratu¬ 
latory epistle to Boswell on this tour, of which we subjoin a few r lines. 

O Boswell, Bozzy, Bruce, whate’er thy name, 

Thou mighty shark for anecdote and fame; 

Thou jackal, leading lion Johnson forth, 

To eat MTherson ’midst his native north; 

To frighten grave professors with his roar, 

And shake the Hebrides from shore to shore. 

Bless’d be thy labors, most adventurous Bozzy, 

Bold rival of Sir John and Dame Piozzi; 

Heavens! with what laurels shall thy head be crown’d I 
A grove, a forest, shall thy ears surround! 

Yes! whilst the Rambler shall a comet blaze, 

And gild a world of darkness with his rays. 

Thee, too. that world with wonderment shall hail, 

A lively, bouncing cracker at his tail! 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


235 


CHAPTER XLII. 

PROJECT OF A DICTIONARY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES—DISAPPOINT¬ 
MENT—NEGLIGENT AUTHORSHIP—APPLICATION FOR A PENSION 
—BEATTIE’S ESSAY ON TRUTH—PUBLIC ADULATION—A HIGH- 
MINDED REBUKE. 

The work which Goldsmith had still in hand being already 
paid for, and the money gone, some new scheme must be de¬ 
vised to provide for the past and the future—for impending 
debts which threatened to crush him, and expenses which 
were continually increasing. He now projected a work of 
greater compass than any he had yet undertaken; a Diction¬ 
ary of Arts and Sciences on a comprehensive scale, which was 
to occupy a number of volumes. For this he received promises 
of assistance from several powerful hands. Johnson was to 
contribute an article on ethics; Burke, an abstract of his 
“ Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,” an essay on the Berk- 
leyan system of philosophy, and others on political science; 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, an essay on painting; and Garrick, while 
he undertook on his own part to furnish an essay on acting, 
engaged Dr. Burney to contribute an article on music. Here 
was a great array of talent positively engaged, while other 
writers of eminence were to be sought for the various depart¬ 
ments of science. Goldsmith was to edit the whole. An un¬ 
dertaking of this kind, while it did not incessantly task and 
exhaust his inventive powers by original composition, would 
give agreeable and profitable exercise to his taste and judg¬ 
ment in selecting, compiling, and arranging, and he calculated 
to diffuse over the whole the acknowledged graces of his style. 

He drew up a prospectus of the plan, which is said by Bishop 
Percy, who saw it, to have been written with uncommon 
ability, and to have had that perspicuity and elegance for 
which his writings are remarkable. This paper, unfortu¬ 
nately, is no longer in existence. 

Goldsmith’s expectations, always sanguine respecting any 
new plan, were raised to an extraordinary height by the pre¬ 
sent project; and well they might be, when we consider the 
powerful coadjutors already pledged. They were doomed, 
however, to complete disappointment. Davies, the bibliopole 


236 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


of Russell Street, lets us into the secret of this failure. “ The 
booksellers,” said he, “ notwithstanding they had a very good 
opinion of his abilities, yet were startled at the bulk, import¬ 
ance, and expense of so great an undertaking, the fate of 
which was to depend upon the industry of a man with whose 
indolence of temper and method of procrastination they had 
long been acquainted.” 

Goldsmith certainly gave reason for some such distrust by * 
the heedlessness with which he conducted his literary under¬ 
takings. Those unfinished, but paid for, would be suspended 
to make way for some job that was to provide for present ne¬ 
cessities. Those thus hastily taken up would be as hastily exe¬ 
cuted, and the whole, however pressing, would be shoved aside 
and left “ at loose ends,” on some sudden call to social enjoy¬ 
ment or recreation. 

Cradock tells us that on one occasion, when Goldsmith was 
hard at work on his Natural History, he sent to Dr. Percy and 
himself, entreating them to finish some pages of his work 
which lay upon his table, and for which the press was urgent, 
he being detained by other engagements at Windsor. They 
met by appointment at his chambers in the Temple, where they 
found everything in disorder, and costly books lying scattered 
about on the tables and on the floor; many of the books on 
natural history which he had recently consulted lay open 
among uncorrected proof-sheets. The subject in hand, and 
from which he had suddenly broken off, related to birds. 
“Do you know anything about birds?” asked Dr. Percy, smil¬ 
ing. *“ Not an atom,” replied Cradock; “ do you?” “Not I! I 
scarcely know a goose from a swan: however, let us try what 
we can do. ” They set to work and completed their friendly 
task. Goldsmith, however, when he came to revise it, made 
such alterations that they could neither of them recognize their 
own share. The engagement at Windsor, which had thus 
caused Goldsmith to break off suddenly from his multifarious 
engagements, was a party of pleasure with some literary ladies. 
Another anecdote was current, illustrative of the carelessness 
with which he executed works requiring accuracy and re¬ 
search. On the 22 d of June he had received payment in ad¬ 
vance for a Grecian History in two volumes, though only one 
was finished. As he was pushing on doggedly at the second 
volume, Gibbon, the historian, called in. “You are the man 
of all others I wish to see,” cried the poet, glad to be saved the 
trouble of reference to his books. “What was the name of 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


237 


that Indian king who gave Alexander the Great so much 
trouble?” “ Montezuma,” replied Gibbon, sportively. The 
heedless author was about committing the name to paper with¬ 
out reflection, when Gibbon pretended to recollect himself, 
and gave the true name, Porus. 

This story, very probably, was a sportive exaggeration; but 
it was a multiplicity of anecdotes like this and the preceding 
one, some true and some false, which had impaired the confi¬ 
dence of booksellers in Goldsmith, as a man to be relied on for 
a task requiring wide and accurate research, and close and 
long-continued application. The project of the Universal 
Dictionary, therefore, met with no encouragement, and fell 
through. 

The failure of this scheme, on which he had built such spa¬ 
cious hopes, sank deep into Goldsmith’s heart. He was still 
further grieved and mortified by the failure of an effort made 
by some of his friends to obtain for him a pension from gov¬ 
ernment. There had been a talk of the disposition of the min¬ 
istry to extend the bounty of the crown to distinguished liter¬ 
ary men in pecuniary difficulty, without regard to their politi¬ 
cal creed: when the merits and claims of Goldsmith, however, 
were laid before them, they met no favor. The sin of sturdy 
independence lay at his door. He had refused to become a 
ministerial hack when offered a carte blanche by Parson Scott, 
the cabinet emissary. The wondering parson had left him in 
poverty and “his garret ,” and there the ministry were dis¬ 
posed to suffer him to remain. 

In the meantime Dr. Beattie comes out with his “Essay on 
Truth,” and all the orthodox world are thrown into a paroxysm 
of contagious ecstasy. He is cried up as the great champion 
of Christianity against the attacks of modem philosophers and 
infidels; he is feted and flattered in every way. He receives 
at Oxford the honorary degree of doctor of civil law, at the 
same time with Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king sends for him, 
praises his “Essay,” and gives him a pension of two hundred 
pounds. 

Goldsmith feels more acutely the denial of a pension to him¬ 
self when one has thus been given unsolicited to a man he 
might without vanity consider so much his inferior. He was 
not one to conceal his feelings. “Here’s such a stir,” said he 
one day at Thrale’s table, ‘ ‘ about a fellow that has written 
one book, and I have written so many!” 

“ A.h, doctor!” exclaimed Johnson, in one of his caustic 


238 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


moods, “there go two and forty sixpences, you know, to one 
guinea.” This is one of the cuts at poor Goldsmith in which 
Johnson went contrary to head and heart in his love for say¬ 
ing what is called a “good thing.” No one knew better than 
himself the comparative superiority of the writings of G old¬ 
smith; hut the jingle of the sixpences and the guinea was not 
to be resisted. 

“Everybody,” exclaimed Mrs. Thrale, “loves Dr. Beattie, 
but Goldsmith, who says he cannot bear the sight of so much 
applause as they all bestow upon him. Did he not tell us 
so himself no one would believe he was so exceedingly ill- 
natured.” 

He told them so himself because he was too open and unre¬ 
served to disguise his feelings, and because he really consid¬ 
ered the praise lavished on Beattie extravagant, as in fact it 
was. It was all, of course, set down to sheer envy and un- 
charitableness. To add to his annoyance, he found his friend, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, joining in the universal adulation. He 
had painted a full-length portrait of Beattie decked in the doc¬ 
tor’s robes in which he had figured at Oxford, with the ‘ ‘ Essay 
on Truth” under his arm and the angel of truth at his side, 
while Voltaire figured as one of the demon's of infidelity, so¬ 
phistry, and falsehood, driven into utter darkness. 

Goldsmith had known Voltaire in early life; he had been his 
admirer and his biographer; he grieved to find him receiving 
such an insult from the classic pencil of his friend. “ It is un¬ 
worthy of you,” said he to Sir Joshua, “to debase so high a 
genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie 
and his book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire’s 
fame will last forever. Take care it does not perpetuate this 
picture to the shame of such a man as you.” This noble and 
high-minded rebuke is the only instance on record of any re¬ 
proachful words between the poet and the painter; and we are 
happy to find that it did not destroy the harmony of their 
intercourse. 


OLIVER GOLD SMITH . 


239 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

TOIL WITHOUT HOPE—THE POET IN THE GREEN-ROOM—IN THE 
FLOWER GARDEN—AT VAUXHALL—DISSIPATION WITHOUT GAY* 
ETY—CRADOCK IN TOWN—FRIENDLY SYMPATHY—A PARTING 
SCENE—AN INVITATION TO PLEASURE. 

Thwarted in the plans and disappointed in the hopes which 
had recently cheered and animated him, Goldsmith found the 
labor at his half-finished tasks doubly irksome from the consci¬ 
entiousness that the completion of them could not relieve him 
from his pecuniary embarrassments. His impaired health, 
also, rendered him less capable than formerly of sedentary 
application, and continual perplexities disturbed the flow of 
thought necessary for original composition. He lost his usual 
gayety and good-humor, and became, at times, peevish and 
irritable. Too proud of spirit to seek sympathy or relief from 
his friends, for the pecuniary difficulties he had brought upon 
himself by his errors and extravagance; and unwilling, per¬ 
haps, to make known their amount, he buried his cares and 
anxieties in his own bosom, and endeavored in company to 
keep up his usual air of gayety and unconcern. This gave his 
conduct an appearance of’ fitfulness and caprice, varying sud¬ 
denly from moodiness to mirth, and from silent gravity to 
shallow laughter; causing surprise and ridicule in those who 
were not aware of the sickness of heart which lay beneath. 

His poetical reputation, too, was sometimes a disadvantage 
to him; it drew upon him a notoriety which he was not always 
in the mood or the vein to act up to. “Good heavens, Mr. 
Foote,” exclaimed an actress at the Haymarket theatre, “what 
a humdrum kind of a man Dr. Goldsmith appears in our green¬ 
room compared with the figure he makes in his poetry!” “ The 
reason of that, madam,” replied Foote, “is because the muses 
are better company than the players.” 

Beauclerc’s letters to his friend, Lord Charlemont, who was 
absent in Ireland, give us now and then an indication of the 
whereabout of the poet during the present year. “I havo 
been but once to the club since you left England,” writes he; 
“we were entertained, as usual, with Goldsmith’s absurdity.” 
With Beauclerc everything was absurd that was not polished 


240 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


and pointed. In another letter he threatens, unless Lord 
Charlemont returns to England, to bring over the whole club, 
and let them loose upon him to drive him home by their pecu¬ 
liar habits of annoyance—Johnson shall spoil his books; Gold¬ 
smith shall pull his flowers; and last, and most intolerable of 
all, Boswell shall—talk to him. It would appear that the poet, 
who had a passion for flowers, was apt to pass much of his 
time in the garden when on a visit to a country seat, much to 
the detriment of the flower-beds and the despair of the gar¬ 
dener. 

The summer wore heavily away with Goldsmith, lie had 
not his usual solace of a country retreat; his health was im¬ 
paired and his spirits depressed. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who 
perceived the state of his mind, kindly gave him much of his 
company. In the course of their interchange of thought, 
Goldsmith suggested to him the story of Ugolino, as a subject 
for his pencil. The painting founded on it remains a memento 
of their friendship. 

On the 4th of August we find them together at Vauxhall; at 
that time a place in high vogue, and which had once been to 
Goldsmith a scene of Oriental splendor and delight. We have, 
in fact, in the “Citizen of the World,”a picture of it as it had 
struck him in former years and in his happier moods. “Upon 
entering the gardens,” says the Chinese philosopher, “ I found 
every sense occupied with more than expected pleasure; the 
lights everywhere glimmering through the scarcely-moving 
trees; the full-bodied concert bursting on the stillness of the 
night; the natural concert of the birds in the more retired 
part of the grove, vying with that which was formed by art; 
the company gayly dressed, looking satisfaction, and the tables 
spread with various delicacies, all conspired to fill my imagin¬ 
ation with, the visionary happiness of the Arabian lawgiver, 
and lifted me into an ecstasy of admiration.’ * 

Everything now, however, is seen with different eyes; with 
him it is dissipation without pleasure; and he finds it impos¬ 
sible any longer, by mingling in the gay and giddy throng of 
apparently prosperous and happy beings, to escape from the 
carking care which is clinging to his heart. 

His kind friend, Cradock, came up to town toward autumn, 
when all the fashionable world was in the country, to give his 
wife the benefit of a skilful dentist. He took lodgings in Nor- 


* Citizen of the World, Letter xxi. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


941 

folk Street, to be in Goldsmith’s neighborhood, and passed 
most of his mornings with him. “I found him,” he says, 
‘ ‘ much altered and at times very low. He wished me to look 
over and revise some of his works; but, with a select friend or 
two, I was more pressing that he should publish by subscription 
his two celebrated poems of the 4 Traveler’ and the 4 Deserted 
Village,’ with notes.” The idea of Cradock was, that the sub¬ 
scription would enable wealthy persons, favorable to Gold¬ 
smith, to contribute to his pecuniary relief without wounding 
his pride. 44 Goldsmith,” said he, “readily gave up to me his 
private copies, and said, 4 Pray do what you please with them.’ 
But while he sat near me, he rather submitted to than encour¬ 
aged my zealous proceedings.” 

44 1 one morning called upon him, however, and found him 
infinitely better than I had expected; and, in a kind of exulting 
style, he exclaimed, ‘Here are some of the best of my prose 
writings; I have been hard at work since midnight , and I desire 
you to examine them.’ 4 These,’ said I, ‘are excellent indeed.’ 
4 They are, ’ replied he, 4 intended as an introduction to a body 
of arts and sciences.’ ” 

Poor Goldsmith was, in fact, gathering together the frag¬ 
ments of his shipwreck; the notes and essays, and memoranda 
collected for his dictionary, and proposed to found on them a 
work in two volumes, to be entitled “A Survey of Experi¬ 
mental Philosophy.” 

The plan of the subscription came to nothing, and the pro¬ 
jected survey never was executed. The head might yet devise, 
but the heart was failing him; his talent at hoping, which gave 
him buoyancy to carry out his enterprises, was almost at an 
end. 

Cradock’s farewell scene with him is told in a simple but 
touching manner. 

“The day before I was to set out for Leicestershire, I insisted 
upon his dining with us. He replied, 4 1 will, but on one con¬ 
dition, that you will not ask me to eat anything.’ 4 Nay,’ said 
I, ‘this answer is absolutely unkind, for I had hoped, as we are 
supplied from the Crown and Anchor, that you would have 
named something you might have relished.’ ‘Well,’was the 
reply, 4 if you will but explain it to Mrs. Cradock, I will cer¬ 
tainly wait upon you.’ 

“ The doctor found, as usual, at my apartments, newspapers 
and pamphlets, and with a pen and ink he amused himself as 
well as he could. I had ordered from the tavern some fish, a 


242 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


roasted joint of lamb, and a tart; and the doctor either sat 
down or walked about just as he pleased. After dinner he took 
some wine with biscuits; but I was obliged soon to leave him 
for a while, as I had matters to settle prior to my next day’s 
journey. On my return coffee was ready, and the doctor ap- 
peared more cheerful (for Mrs. Cradock was always rather a 
favorite with him), and in the evening he endeavored to talk 
and remark as usual, but all was forced. He stayed till mid¬ 
night, and I insisted on seeing him safe home, and we most 
cordially shook hands at the Temple gate.” Cradock little 
thought that this was to be their final parting. He looked 
back to it with mournful recollections in after years, and 
lamented that he had not remained longer in town at every 
inconvenience, to solace the poor broken-spirited poet. 

The latter continued in town all the autumn. At the open¬ 
ing of the Opera House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, 
an actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical 
exordium of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord 
Charlemont, pronounced it very good, and predicted that it 
would soon be in all the papers. It does not appear, however, 
to have been ever published. In his fitful state of mind Gold¬ 
smith may have taken no care about it, and thus it has been 
lost to the world, although it was received with great applause 
by a crowded and brilliant audience. 

A gleam of sunshine breaks through the gloom that was 
gathering over the poet. Toward the end of the year he re¬ 
ceives another Christmas invitation to Barton. A country 
Christmas! with all the cordiality of the fireside circle, and the 
joyous revelry of the oaken hall—what a contrast to the lone¬ 
liness of a bachelor’s chambers in the Temple! It is not to be 
resisted. But how is poor Goldsmith to raise the ways and 
means? His purse is empty; his booksellers are already in ad¬ 
vance to him. As a last resource, he applies to Garrick. Their 
mutual intimacy at Barton may have suggested him as an al¬ 
ternative. The old loan of forty pounds has never been paid; 
and Newbery’s note, pledged as a security, has never been 
taken up. An additional loan of sixty pounds is now asked 
for, thus increasing the loan to one hundred; to insure the 
payment, he now offers, besides Newbery’s note, the transfer 
of the comedy of the Good-Natured Man to Drury Lane, with 
such alterations as Garrick may suggest. Garrick, in reply, 
evades the offer of the altered comedy, alludes significantly to 
a new one which Goldsmith had talked of writing for him, 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 243 

and offers to furnish the money required on his own accept¬ 
ance. 

The reply of Goldsmith bespeaks a heart brimful of gratitude 
and overflowing with fond anticipations of Barton and the 
smiles of its fair residents. “My dear friend,” writes he, “I 
thank you. I wish I could do something to serve you. I shall 
have a comedy for you in a season, or two at farthest, that I 
believe will be worth your acceptance, for I fancy I will mak® 
it a fine thing. You shall have the refusal. ... I will draw 
upon you one month after date for sixty pounds, and your ac¬ 
ceptance will be ready money, part of which I want to go down 
to Barton with. May God preserve my honest little man, for 
he has my heart. Ever, 

“ Oliver Goldsmith.” 

And having thus scrambled together a little pocket money, 
by hard contrivance, poor Goldsmith turns his back upon care 
and trouble, and Temple quarters, to forget for a time his des- 
olate bachelorhood in the family circle and a Christmas fireside 
at Barton. 


CHAPTER XLIY. 

A RETURN TO DRUDGERY—FORCED GAYETY—RETREAT TO THE 
COUNTRY—THE POEM OF RETALIATION—PORTRAIT OF GARRICK 
—OF GOLDSMITH—OF REYNOLDS—ILLNESS OF THE POET—HIS 
DEATH—GRIEF OF HIS FRIENDS—A LAST WORD RESPECTING 
THE JESSAMY BRIDE. 

The Barton festivities are over; Christmas, with all its 
home-felt revelry of the heart, has passed like a dream; the 
Jessamy Bride has beamed her last smile upon the poor poet, 
and the early part of 1774 finds him in his now dreary bachelor 
abode in the Temple, toiling fitfully and hopelessly at a multi¬ 
plicity of tasks. His “ Animated Nature,” so long delayed, so 
often interrupted, is at length announced for publication, 
though it has yet to receive a few finishing touches. He is 
preparing a third “ History of England,” to be compressed and 
condensed in one volume, for the use of schools. He is revis¬ 
ing his “ Inquiry into Polite Learning,” for which he receives 
the pittance of five guineas, much needed in his present scanti- 



244 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


ness of purse; he is arranging his “Survey of Experimental 
Philosophy,” and he is translating the “Comic Romance of 
Scarron.” Such is a part of the various labors of a drudging, 
depressing kind, by which his head is made weary and his 
heart faint. “ If there is a mental drudgery,” says Sir Walter 
Scott, ‘ ‘ which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like 
the toil of a slave, it is that which is exacted by literary com¬ 
position, when the heart is not in unison with the work upon 
which the head is employed. Add to the unhappy author’s 
task sickness, sorrow, or the pressure of unfavorable circum¬ 
stances, and the labor of the bondsman becomes light in com¬ 
parison.” Goldsmith again makes an effort to rally his spirits 
by going into gay society. “Our club,” writes Beauclerc to 
Charlemont, on the 12th of February, “has dwindled away to 
nothing. Sir Joshua and Goldsmith have got into such a 
round of pleasures that they have no time.” This shows how 
little Beauclerc was the companion of the poet’s mind, or could 
judge of him below the surface. Reynolds, the kind participator 
in joyless dissipation, could have told a different story of his 
companion’s heart-sick gayety. 

In this forced mood Goldsmith gave entertainments in his 
chambers in the Temple; the last of which was a dinner to 
Johnson, Reynolds, and others of his intimates, who partook 
with sorrow and reluctance of his imprudent hospitality. The 
first course vexed them by its needless profusion. When a 
second, equally extravagant, was served up, Johnson and Rey¬ 
nolds declined to partake oi it; the rest of the company, under¬ 
standing their motives, followed their example, and the dishes 
went from the table untasted. Goldsmith felt sensibly this 
silent and well-intended rebuke. 

The gayeties of society, however, cannot medicine for any 
length of time a mind diseased. Wearied by the distractions 
and harassed by the expenses of a town life, which he had not 
the discretion to regulate, Goldsmith took the resolution, too 
tardily adopted, of retiring to the serene quiet and cheap and 
healthful pleasures of the country, and of passing only two 
months of the year in London. He accordingly made arrange¬ 
ments to sell his right in the Temple chambers, and in the 
month of March retired to his country quarters at Hyde, there 
to devote himself to toil. At this dispirited juncture when in¬ 
spiration seemed to be at an end, and the poetic fire extin¬ 
guished, a spark fell on his combustible imagination and set in 
a blaze. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


2 45 


He belonged to a temporary association of men of talent, 
some of them members of the Literary Club, who dined to¬ 
gether occasionally at the St. James’ Coffee-house. At these 
dinners, as usual, he was one of the last to arrive. On one oc¬ 
casion, when he was more dilatory than usual, a whim seized 
the company to write epitaphs on him, as ‘ ‘ The late Dr. Gold¬ 
smith, ” and several were thrown off in a playful vein, hitting 
off his peculiarities. The only one extant was written by 
Garrick, and has been preserved, very probably, by its pun 
gency: 

“ Here lies poor Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 

Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor poll.” 


Goldsmith did not relish the sarcasm, especially as coming 
from such a quarter. He was not very ready at repartee; but 
he took his time, and in the interval of his various tasks, 
concocted a series of epigrammatic sketches, under the title of 
Retaliation, in which the characters of his distinguished inti¬ 
mates were admirably hit off, with a mixture of generous 
praise and good-humored raillery. In fact the poem for its 
graphic truth; its nice discrimination; its terse good sense, 
and its shrewd knowledge of the world, must have electrified 
the club almost as much as the first appearance of The Travel¬ 
ler, and let them still deeper into the character and talents of 
the man they had been accustomed to consider as their butt. 
Retaliation, in a word, closed his accounts with the club, and 
balanced all his previous deficiencies. 

The portrait of David Garrick is one of the most elaborate in 
the poem. When the poet came to touch it off, he had some 
lurking piques to gratify, which the recent attack had re¬ 
vived. He may have forgotten David’s cavalier treatment of 
him in the early days of his comparative obscurity; he may 
have forgiven bis refusal of his plays; but Garrick had been 
capricious in his conduct in the times of their recent inter¬ 
course; sometimes treating him with gross familiarity, at 
other times affecting dignity and reserve, and assuming airs 
of superiority; frequently he had been facetious and witty in 
company at his expense, and lastly he had been guilty of the 
couplet just quoted. Goldsmith, therefore, touched off the 
lights and shadows of his character with a free hand, and, at 
the same time, gave a side hit at his old rival, Kelly, and his 
critical persecutor, Kenrick, in making them sycophantic 
satellites of the actor. Goldsmith, however, was void of gall, 


246 


0LIVEN GOLDSMITH. 


even in his revenge, and his very satire was more humorous 
than caustic: 

“ Here lies David Garrick, describe him who can, 

An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man; 

As an actor, confess'd without rival to shine; 

As a wit, if not first, in the very first line: 

Yet,'with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 

The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 

Like an ill-judging beauty, his colors he spread, 

And beplaster’d with rouge his own natural red. 

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; 

’Twas only that when he was off he was actieig. 

With no reason on earth to go out of his way, 

He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day: 

Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 
If they were not his own by finessing and trick: 

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, 

For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them ba*k. 

Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow’d what came, 

And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; 

Till his relish, grown callous almost to disease, 

Who pepper’d the highest was surest to please. 

But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, 

If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 

Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, 

What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gavel 
How did Grub Street reecho the shouts that you raised, 

While he was be-Rosciused and you were be*praisedl 
But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies. 

To act as an angel and mix with the skies: 

Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill, 

Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will; 

Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, 

And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.” 

This portion of Retaliation soon brought a retort from 
Garrick, which we insert, as giving something of a likeness of 
Goldsmith, though in broad caricature: 

“ Here, Hermes, says Jove, who with nectar was mellow, 

Go fetch me some clay—I will make an odd fellow: 

Right and wrong shall be jumbled, much gold and some dross, 

Without cause be he pleased, without cause be he cross; 

Be sure, as I work, to throw in contradictions, 

A great love of truth, yet a mind turn’d to fictions; 

Now mix these ingredients, which, warm’d in the baking 
Turn'd to learning and gaming, religion, and raking. 

With the love of a wench, let his writings be chaste; 

Tip his tongue with strange matters, his lips with fine taste; 

That the rake and the poet, o’er all may prevail, 

Set fire to the head and set fire to the tail: 

For the joy of each sex on the world I’ll bestow it, 

This scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gamester, and poet. 

Though a mixture so odd, he shall merit great fame, 

And among brother mortals be Goldsmith his name; 

When on earth this strange meteor no more shall appear. 

You, Hermes, shell fetch him, to make us sport here.” 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH 


247 


The charge of raking, so repeatedly advanced in the fore 
going lines, must be considered a sportive one, founded per¬ 
haps, on an incident or two within Garrick’s knowledge, but 
not borne out by the course of Goldsmith’s life. He seems to 
have had a tender sentiment for the sex, but perfectly free 
from libertinism. Neither was he an habitual gamester. The 
strictest scrutiny has detected no settled vice of the kind. He 
was fond of a game of cards, but an unskilful and careless 
player. Cards in those days were universally introduced into 
society. High play was, in fact, a fashionable amusement, as 
at one time was deep drinking; and a man might occasionally 
lose large sums, and be beguiled into deep potations, without 
incurring the character of a gamester or a drunkard. Poor 
Goldsmith, on his advent into high society, assumed fine 
notions with fine clothes; he was thrown occasionally among 
high players, men of fortune who could sport their cool 
hundreds as carelessly as his early comrades at Ballymahon 
could their half-crowns. Being at all times, magnificent in 
money matters, he may have played with them in their own 
way, without considering that what was sport to them to him 
was ruin. Indeed part of his financial embarrassments may 
have arisen from losses of the kind, incurred inadvertently, 
not in the indulgence of a habit. “I do not believe Goldsmith 
to have deserved the name of gamester,” said one of his con¬ 
temporaries ; “he liked cards very well, as other people do, 
and lost and won occasionally; but as far as I saw or heard, 
and I had many opportunities of hearing, never any consider¬ 
able sum. If he gamed with any one, it was probably with 
Beauclerc, but I do not know that such was the case.” 

Retaliation, as we have already observed, was thrown off in 
parts, at intervals, and was never completed. Some charac¬ 
ters, originally intended to be introduced, remained unat¬ 
tempted; others were but partially sketched—such was the 
one of Reynolds, the friend of his heart, and which he 
commenced with a felicity which makes us regret that it 
should remain unfinished. 


“ Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, 

He has not left a wiser or better behind. 

His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; 

His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; 

Still born to improve us in every part, 

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 

To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 

When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing: 


248 


OLIVJUl GOLDSMITH. 


When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 

He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. 

By flattery unspoiled ’ ’- 

The friendly portrait stood unfinished on the easel; the hand 
of the artist had failed! An access of a local complaint, under 
which he had sulfered for some time past, added to a general 
prostration of health, brought Goldsmith back to town before 
he had well settled himself in the country. The local complaint 
subsided, but was followed by a low nervous fever. He was 
not aware of his critical situation, and intended to be at the 
club on the 25th of March, on which occasion Charles Fox, Sir 
Charles Bunbury (one of the Horneck connection), and two 
other new members were to be present. In the afternoon, how¬ 
ever, he felt so unwell as to take to his bed, and his symptoms 
soon acquired sufficient force to keep him there. His malady 
fluctuated for several days, and hopes "were entertained of his 
recovery, but they proved fallacious. He had skilful medical 
aid and faithful nursing, but he would not follow the advice of 
his physicians, and persisted in the use of James’ powders, 
which he had once found beneficial, but which were now inju¬ 
rious to him. His appetite was gone, his strength failed him, 
but his mind remained clear, and was perhaps too active for his 
frame. Anxieties and disappointments which had previously 
sapped his constitution, doubtless aggravated his present com¬ 
plaint and rendered him sleepless. In reply to an inquiry of 
his physician, he acknowledged that his mind was ill at ease. 
This was his last reply; he was too weak to talk, and in gen¬ 
eral took no notice of what was said to him. He sank at last 
into a deep sleep, and it was hoped a favorable crisis had ar¬ 
rived. He awoke, however, in strong convulsions, which con¬ 
tinued without intermission until he expired, on the fourth of 
April, at five o’clock in the morning; being in the forty-sixth 
year of his age. 

His death was a shock to the literary world, and a deep af¬ 
fliction to a wide circle of intimates and friends; for with all 
his foibles and peculiarities, he was fully as much beloved as he 
was admired. Burke, on hearing the news, burst into tears. 
Sir Joshua Reynolds threw by his pencil for the day, and 
grieved more than he had done in times of great family distress. 
“I was abroad at the time of his death,” writes Dr. M’Donnell, 
the youth whom when in distress he had employed as an 
amanuensis, “and I wept bitterly when the intelligence first 
reached me. A blank came over my heart as if I had lost one 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


249 


of my nearest relatives, and was followed for some days by a 
feeling of despondency.” Johnson felt the blow deeply and 
gloomily. In writing some time afterward to Boswell, he ob¬ 
served, “Of poor Dr. Goldsmith there is little to be told more 
than the papers have made public. He died of a fever, made, 
I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts 
began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. Sir 
Joshua is of opinion that he owed no less than two thousand 
pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before?” 

Among his debts were seventy-nine pounds due to his tailor, 
Mr. William Filby, from whom he had received a new suit but 
a few days before his death. “My father,” said the younger 
Filby, “though a loser to that amount, attributed no blame to 
Goldsmith; he had been a good customer, and had he lived 
would have paid every farthing.” Others of his tradespeople 
evinced the same confidence in his integrity, notwithstanding 
his heedlessness. Two sister milliners in Temple Lane, who 
had been accustomed to deal with him, were concerned, when 
told, some time before his death, of his pecuniary embarrass¬ 
ments. “ Oh, sir,” said they to Mr. Cradock, “sooner persuade 
him to let us work for him gratis than apply to any other; we 
are sure he will pay us when he can.” 

On the stairs of his apartment there was the lamentation of 
the old and infirm, and the sobbing of women; poor objects of 
his charity to whom he had never turned a deaf ear, even when 
struggling himself with poverty. 

But there was one mourner, whose enthusiasm for his mem¬ 
ory, could it have been foreseen, might have soothed the bitter¬ 
ness of death. After the.coffin had been screwed down, a lock 
of his hair was requested for a lady, a particular friend, who 
wished to preserve it as a remembrance. It was the beautiful 
Mary Horneck—the Jessamy Bride. The coffin was opened 
again, and a lock of* hair cut off; which she treasured to her 
dying day. Poor Goldsmith! could he have foreseen that such 
a memorial of him was to be thus cherished. 

One word more concerning this lady, to whom we have so 
often ventured to advert. She survived almost to the present 
day. Hazlitt met her at Northcote’s painting-room, about 
twenty years since, as Mrs. Gwyn, the widow of a General 
Gwyn of the army. She was at that time upward of seventy 
years of age. Still, he said, she was beautiful, beautiful even 
in years. After she was gone, Hazlitt remarked how handsome 
she still was. “I do not know,” said Northcote, “why she 


250 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


is so kind as to come and see me, except that I am the last link 
in the chain that connects her with all those she most esteemed 
when young—Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith—and remind her 
of the most delightful period of her life.” “Not only so,” 
observed Hazlitt, ‘ ‘ but you remember what she was at twenty; 
and you thus bring back to her the triumphs of her youth— 
that pride of beauty, which must be the more fondly cherished 
as it has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly in the bosom 
of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the Graces had 
triumphed over time; she was one of Ninon do l’Enclos’ people, 
of the last of the immortals. I could almost fancy the shade of 
Goldsmith in the room, looking round with complacency.” 

The Jessamy Bride survived her sister upward of forty years, 
and died in 1840, within a few days of completing her eighty- 
eighth year. “She had gone through all the stages of life,” 
says Northcote, “and had lent a grace to each.” However 
gayly she may have sported with the half-concealed admiration 
of the poor awkward poet in the heydey of her youth and 
beauty, and however much it may have been made a subject 
of teasing by her youthful companions, she evidently prided 
herself in after years upon having been an object of his affec¬ 
tionate regard; it certainly rendered her interesting* through-, 
out life in the eyes of his admirers, and has hung a poetical 
wreath above her grave. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

THE FUNERAL—THE MONUMENT—THE EPITAPH—CONCLUDING 
REMARKS. 

In the warm feeling of the moment, while the remains of the 
poet were scarce cold, it was determined by his friends to 
honor them by a public funeral, and a tomb in Westminster 
Abbey. His very pall-bearers were designated: Lord Shel¬ 
burne, Lord Lowth, Sir Joshua Reynolds; the Hon. Mr. 
Beauclerc, Mr. Burke, and David Garrick. This feeling cooled 
down, however, when it was discovered that he died in debt, 
and had not left wherewithal to pay for such expensive obse¬ 
quies. Five days after his death, therefore, at five o’clock of 
Saturday evening, the 9th of April, he was privately interred 
in the burying-ground of the Temple Church, a few persons 
attending as mourners, among whom we do not find specified 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


251 


any of his peculiar and distinguished friends. The chie^ 
mourner was Sir Joshua Reynolds’s nephew, Palmer, after 
ward Dean of Cashel. One person, however, from whom it 
was but little to be expected, attended the funeral and evinced 
real sorrow on the occasion. This was Hugh Kelly, once the 
dramatic rival of the deceased, and often, it is said, his anony¬ 
mous assailant in the newspapers. If he had really been guilty 
of this basest of literary offences, he was punished by the 
stings of remorse, for we are told that he shed bitter tears 
over the grave of the man he had injured. His tardy atone¬ 
ment only provoked the lash of some unknown satirist, as the 
following lines will show: 

“ Hence Kelly, who years, without honor or shame, 

Had been sticking his bodkin in Oliver’s fame, 

Who thought, like the Tartar, by this to inherit 
His genius, his learning, simplicity, spirit; 

Now sets every feature to weep o’er his fate, 

And acts as a mourner to blubber in state.” 

One base wretch deserves to be mentioned, the reptile Ken- 
rick, who, after having repeatedly slandered Goldsmith, while 
living, had the audacity to insult his memory when dead. The 
following distich is sufficient to show his malignity, and to 
hold him up to execration: 

“ By his own art, who justly died, 

A blund’ring, artless suicide: 

Share, earthworms, share, sincQ now he’s dead, 

His megrim, maggot-bitten head.” 

This scurrilous epitaph produced a burst of public indigna¬ 
tion that awed for a time even the infamous Kenrick into 
silence. On the other hand, the press teemed with tributes in 
verse and prose to the memory of the deceased; all evincing 
the mingled feeling of admiration for the author and affection 
for the man. 

Not long after his death the Literary Club set on foot a sub¬ 
scription. and raised a fund to erect a monument his mem 
ory in Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Nollekins, 
and consisted simply of a bust of the poet in profile, in high 
relief, in a medalhon, and was placed in the area of a pointed 
arch, over the south door in Poets’ Corner, between the monu¬ 
ments of Gay and the Duke of Argyle. Johnson furnished a 
Latin epitaph, which was read at the table of Sir Joshua Rey¬ 
nolds, where several members of the club and other friends of 
the deceased were present. Though considered by them a 


252 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


masterly composition, they thought the literary character of 
the poet not defined with sufficient exactness, and they pre¬ 
ferred that the epitaph should be in English rather than Latin, 
as ‘ ‘ the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be 
perpetuated in the language to which his works were likely to 
be so lasting an ornament. ” 

These objections were reduced to writing, to be respectfully 
submitted to Johnson, but such was the awe entertained of his 
frown, that every one shrank from putting his name first to 
the instrument; whereupon their names were written about in 
a circle, making what mutinous sailors call a Round Robin. 
Johnson received it half graciously, half grimly. “He was 
willing,” he said, “to modify the sense of the epitaph in any 
manner which the gentlemen pleased; but he never would con¬ 
sent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey ivith an English 
inscription .” Seeing the names of Dr. Wharton and Edmund 
Burke among the signers, “he wondered,” he said, “that Joe 
Wharton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool; and 
should have thought that Mund Burke would have had' more 
sense.” The following is the epitaph as it stands inscribed on 
a white marble tablet beneath the bust: 

“ OLIVARII GOLDSMITH, 

Poetae, Physici, Historiei, 

Qui nullum fere scribendi genus 
Non tetigit, 

Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit 
Sive risus essent movendi, 

Sive lacrymae, 

Affectuum potens ac lenis dominator: 

Ingenio sublimis, vividus. versatilis, 

Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus: 

Hoc monuinento memoriam coluit 
Sodalium amor, 

Amicorum tides, 

Lectorum veneratio. 

Natus in Hibernia Forniae Longfordiensis, 

In loco cui nomen Pallas, 

Nov. xxix. mdccxxxi. ; 

Eblanae literis institutus; 

Obiit Londini, 

April iv. MDCCLXxiv.” * 


* The following translation is from Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Johnson. 

OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH— 

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, 

Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,. 

And touched nothing that he did not adorn; 





OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


253 


We shall not pretend to follow these anecdotes of the life of 
Goldsmith with any critical dissertation on his writings; their 
merits have long since been fully discussed, and their station 
in the scale of literary merit permanently established. They 
have outlasted generations of works of higher power and wider 
f scope, and will continue to outlast succeeding generations, for 
they have that magic charm of style by which works are em¬ 
balmed to perpetuity. Neither shall we attempt a regular 
analysis of the character of the poet, but will indulge in a few 
desultory remarks in addition to those scattered throughout 
the preceding chapters. 

Never was the trite, because sage apothegm, that “ The child 
is father to the man,” more fully verified than in the case of 
Goldsmith. He is shy, awkward, and blundering in child¬ 
hood, yet full of sensibility; he is a butt for the jeers and 
jokes of his companions, but apt to surprise and confound 
them by sudden and witty repartees; he is dull and stupid at 
his tasks, yet an eager and intelligent devourer of the travel¬ 
ling tales and campaigning stories of his half military peda¬ 
gogue; he may be a dunce, but he is already a rhymer; and 
his early scintillations of poetry awaken the expectations of 
his friends. He seems from infancy to have been compounded 
of two natures, one bright, the other blundering; or to have 
had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the ‘ ‘ good people” who 
haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion on the banks 
of the Inny. 

He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so 
term it, throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail 
at school, academy, or college; they unfit him for close study 


Of all the passions, 

. Whether smiles were to be moved or tears, 

A powerful yet gentle master; 

In genius, sublime, vivid, versatile, 

In style, elevated, clear, elegant— 

The love of companions, 

The fidelity of friends, 

And the veneration of readers, 

Have by this monument honored the memory. 
He was born in Ireland, 

At a place called Pallas, 

[In the parish] of Forney, [and county] of Longford, 
On the 29th Nov., 1731. 

Educated at [the University of] Dublin, 

And died in London, 

April 4th, 1774. 



254 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


and practical science, and render him heedless of everything 
that does not address itself to his poetical imagination and 
genial and festive feelings; they dispose him to break away 
from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and haunted 
streams, to revel with jovial companions, or to rove the 
country like a gipsy in quest of odd adventures. 

As if confiding in these delusive gifts, he takes no heed of 
the present nor care for the future, lays no regular and solid 
foundation of knowledge, follows out no plan, adopts and dis¬ 
cards those recommended hy his friends, at one time prepares 
for the ministry, next turns to the law, and then fixes upon 
medicine. He repairs to Edinburgh, the great emporium of 
medical science, but the fairy gifts accompany him; he idles 
and frolics away his time there, imbibing only such knowledge 
as is agreeable to him; makes an excursion to the poetical 
regions of the Highlands; and having walked the hospitals for 
the customary time, sets off to ramble over the Continent, in 
quest of novelty rather than knowledge. His whole tour is a 
poetical one. He fancies he is playing the philosopher while 
he is really playing the poet; and though professedly he 
attends lectures and visits foreign universities, so deficient is 
he on his return, in the studies for which he set out, that he 
fails in an examination as a surgeon’s mate; and while figur¬ 
ing as a doctor of medicine, is outvied on a point of practice 
by his apothecary. Baffled in every regular pursuit, after 
trying in vain some of the humbler callings of commonplace 
life, he is driven almost by chance to the exercise of his pen, 
and here the fairy gifts come to his assistance. For a long 
time, however, he seems unaware of the magic properties of 
that pen; he uses it only as a makeshift until he can find a 
legitimate means of support. He is not a learned man, and 
can write but meagrely and at second-hand on learned sub¬ 
jects; but he has a quick convertible talent that seizes lightly 
on the points of knowledge necessary to the illustration of a 
theme; his writings for a time are desultory, the fruits of 
what he has seen and felt, or what he has recently and hastily 
read; but his gifted pen transmutes everything into gold, and 
his own genial nature reflects its sunshine through his pages. 

Still unaware of his powers he throws off his writings 
anonymously, to go with the writings of less favored men; 
and it is a long time, and after a bitter struggle with poverty 
and humiliation, before he acquires confidence in his literary 
talent as a means of support, and begins to dream of reputation. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


2 m 


From this time his pen is a wand of power in his hand, and 
he has only to use it discreetly, to make it competent to all his 
wants. But discretion is not a part of Goldsmith’s nature; 
and it seems the property of these fairy gifts to be accom¬ 
panied by moods and temperaments to render their effect 
precarious. The heedlessness of his early days; his disposition 
for social enjoyment; his habit of throwing the present on the 
neck of the future, still continue. His expenses forerun his 
means; he incurs debts on the faith of what his magic pen is 
to produce, and then, under the pressure of his debts, sacrifices 
its productions for prices far below their value. It is a 
redeeming circumstance in his prodigality, that it is lavished 
oftener upon others than upon himself; he gives without 
thought or stint, and is the continual dupe of his benevolence 
and his trustfulness in human nature. We may say of him as 
he says of one of his heroes, ‘ ‘ He could not stifle the natural 
impulse which he had to .do good, but frequently borrowed 
money to relieve the distressed; and when he knew not con¬ 
veniently where to borrow, he has been observed to shed tears 
as he passed through the wretched suppliants who attended 
his gate.” . . . 

“ His simplicity in trusting persons whom he had no previous 
reasons to place confidence in, seems to be one of those lights 
of his character which, while they impeach his understanding, 
do honor to his benevolence. The low and the timid are ever 
suspicious; but a heart impressed with honorable sentiments 
expects from others sympathetic sincerity.” * 

His heedlessness in pecuniary matters, which had rendered 
his life a struggle with poverty even in the days of his ota 
scurity, rendered his struggle still more intense when his fairy 
gifts had elevated him into the society of the wealthy and 
luxurious, and imposed on his simple and generous spirii 
fancied obligations' to a more ample and bounteous display. 

“ How comes it,” says a recent and ingenious critic, “ that 
in all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no apeck eve* 
sullied the robe of his modest and graceful muse. How amid 
all that love of inferior company, which never to t he last for¬ 
sook him, did he keep his genius so free from every touch of 
vulgarity?” 

We answer that it was owing to the innate purity and good¬ 
ness of his nature; there was nothing in it that assimilated to 


* Goldsmith’s Life of Nash. 




256 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


vice and vulgarity. Though his circumstances often com* 
pelled him to associate with the poor, they never could betray 
him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for 
humor and for the study of character, as we have before 
observed, brought him often into convivial company of a 
vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity 
and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole- 
those familiar features of life which form the staple of his 
most popular writings. 

Much, too, of this intact purity of heart may be ascribed to 
the lessons of his infancy under the paternal roof; to the 
gentle, benevolent, elevated, unworldly maxims of his father, 
who “ passing rich with forty pounds a year,” infused a spirit 
into his child which riches could not deprave nor poverty 
degrade. Much of his boyhood, too, had been passed in the 
household of his uncle, the amiable and generous Contarine; 
where he talked of literature with, the good pastor, and prac¬ 
tised music with his daughter, and delighted them both by his 
juvenile attempts at poetry. These early associations breathed 
a grace and refinement into his mind and tuned it up, after 
the rough sports on the green, or the frolics at the tavern. 
These led him to turn from the roaring glees of the club, to 
listen to the harp of his cousin Jane; and from the rustic 
triumph of “throwing sledge,” to a stroll with his flute along 
the pastoral banks of the Inny. 

The gentle spirit of his father walked with him through life, 
a pure and virtuous monitor; and in all the vicissitudes of his 
career we find him ever more chastened in mind by the sweet 
and holy recollections of the home of his infancy. 

It has been questioned whether he really had any religious 
feeling. Those who raise the question have never considered 
well his writings; his Vicar of Wakefield, and his pictures of 
the Village .Pastor, present religion under its most endearing 
forms, and with a feeling that could only flow from the deep 
convictions of the heart. When his fair travelling companions 
at Paris urged him to read the Church Service on a Sunday, he 
replied that ‘ ‘ he was not worthy to do it. ” He had seen in 
early life the sacred offices performed by his father and his 
brother, with a solemnity which had sanctified them in his 
memory; how could he presume to undertake such functions? 
His religion has been called in question by J ohnson and by 
Boswell; he certainly had not the gloomy hypochondriacal 
piety of the one, nor the babbling mouth-piety of the other; 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


257 


but the spirit of Christian charity breathed forth in his writ- 
mgs and illustrated in his conduct give us reason to believe he 
had the indwelling religion of the soul. 

We have made sufficient comments in the preceding chapters 
on his conduct in elevated circles of literature and fashion. 
The fairy gifts which took him there, were not accompanied by 
the gifts and graces necessary to sustain him in that artificial 
sphere. He can neither play the learned sage with Johnson, 
nor the fine gentleman with Beauclerc, though he has a mind 
replete with wisdom and natural shrewdness, and a spirit free 
from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, 
and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of 
fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity winch 
like the charge of lunacy, it is hard to disprove, however weak 
the grounds of the charge and strong the facts in opposition to 
it. 

In truth, he is never truly in his place in these learned and 
fashionable circles, which talk and live for display. It is not 
the kind of society he craves. His heart yearns for domestic 
life; it craves familiar, confiding intercourse, family firesides, 
the guileless and happy company of children; these bring out 
the heartiest and sweetest sympathies of his nature. 

“Had it been his fate,” says the critic we have already 
quoted, ‘ * to meet a woman who could have loved him, despite 
his faults, and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but 
think that his life and his genius would have been much more 
harmonious; his desultory affections would have been concen- 
trea, nis craving self-love appeased, his pursuits more settled, 
his character more solid. A nature like Goldsmith’s, so affec¬ 
tionate, so confiding—so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoy¬ 
ments—so dependent on others for the sunshine of existence, 
does not flower if deprived of the atmosphere of home.” 

The cravings of his heart in this respect are evident, we 
think, throughout hiu career; and if we have dwelt with more 
significancy than others, upon his intercourse with the beauti¬ 
ful Horneck family, it is because we fancied we could detect, 
amid his playful attentions to one of its members, a lurking 
sentiment of tenderness, kept down by conscious poverty and 
a humiliating idea of personal defects. A hopeless feeling of 
this kind—the last a man would communicate to his friends— 
might account for much of that fitfulness of conduct, and that 
gathering melancholy, remarked, but not comprehended by 
his associates, during the last year or two of his life; and may 


258 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 


have been one of the troubles of the mind which aggravated 
his last illness, and only terminated with his death. 

We shall conclude these desultory remarks with a few which 
have been used by us on a former occasion. From the general 
tone of Goldsmith’s biography, it is evident that his faults, at 
the worst, were but negative, while his merits were great and 
decided. He was no one’s enemy but his own; his errors, in 
the main, inflicted evil on none but himself, and were so 
blended with humorous, and even affecting circumstances, as 
to disarm anger and conciliate kindness. Where eminent 
talent is united to spotless virtue, we are awed and dazzled 
into admiration, but our admiration is apt to be cold and rever¬ 
ential ; while there is something in the harmless infirmities of 
a good and great, but erring individual, that pleads touchingly 
to our nature; and we turn more kindly toward the object of 
our idolatry, when we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal 
and is frail. The epithet so often heard, and in such kindly 
tones, of “Poor Goldsmith,” speaks volumes. Few who con¬ 
sider the real compound of admirable and whimsical qualities 
which form his character, would wish to prune away its eccen¬ 
tricities, trim its grotesque luxuriance, and clip it down to the 
decent formalities of rigid virtue. “Let not his frailties be 
remembered,” said Johnson; “he was a very great man.” 
But, for our part, we rather say “Let them be remembered,” 
since their tendency is to endear; and we question whether he 
himself would not feel gratified in hearing his reader, after 
dwelling with admiration on the proofs of his greatness, close 
the volume with the kind-hearted phrase, so fondly and faioi' 
varly ejaculated, of “Poor Goldsmith.” 


MAHOMET 


AND 


SUCCESSORS. 


BY 


WASHINGTON IRVINGo 




PREFACE. 


Some apology may seem necessary for presenting a life of Ma¬ 
homet at the present day, when no new fact can be added to 
those already known concerning him. Many years since, dur¬ 
ing a residence in Madrid, the author projected a series of 
writings illustrative of the domination of the Arabs in Spain. 
These were to be introduced by a sketch of the life of the foun¬ 
der of the Islam faith, and the first mover of Arabian conquest. 
Most of the particulars for this were drawn from Spanish 
sources, and from Gagnier’s translation of the Arabian histo¬ 
rian Abulfeda, a copy of which the author found in the Jesuits’ 
Library of the Convent of St. Isidro, at Madrid. 

Not having followed out in its extent, the literary plan de¬ 
vised, the manuscript life lay neglected among the author’s 
papers until the year 1831, when he revised and enlarged it for 
the Family Library of Mr. John Murray. Circumstances pre¬ 
vented its publication at the time, and it again was thrown 
aside for years. 

During his last residence in Spain, the author beguiled the 
tediousness of a lingering indisposition, by again revising the 
manuscript, profiting in so doing by recent lights thrown on 
the subject by different writers, and particularly by Dr. Gustav 
Weil, the very intelligent and learned librarian of the Univer¬ 
sity of Heidelberg, to whose industrious researches and able 
disquisitions, he acknowledges himself greatly indebted.* 

Such is the origin of the work now given to the public; on 
which the author lays no claim to novelty of fact, nor profun¬ 
dity of research. It still bears the type of a work intended for 
a family library; in constructing which the whole aim of the 


* Mohammed der Prophet sein Leben und seine Lehre. Stuttcart. 1843 




4 


PREFACE. 


writer has been to digest into an easy, perspicuous, and flow¬ 
ing narrative, the admitted facts concerning Mahomet, together 
with such legends and traditions as have been wrought into the 
whole system of oriental literature; and at the same time to 
give such a summary of his faith as might be sufficient for the 
more general reader. Under such circumstances, he has not 
thought it worth while to incumber his pages with a scaffolding 
of references and citations, nor depart from the old English no¬ 
menclature of oriental names. 


SUNNYSIDE, 1849. 


W. L 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 


CONTENTS. 


PART I. 

PAGE 

Preface. 3 

CHAPTER I. 

Preliminary notice of Arabia and the Arabs. 15 

CHAPTER II. 

Birth and parentage of Mahomet. — His infancy and childhood. zo 

CHAPTER IIL 

Traditions concerning Mecca and the Caaba . 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

First journey of Mahomet with the caravan to Syria. 32 

CHAPTER V. 

Commercial occupations of Mahomet.—His marriage with Cadi^a'n. 35 

CHAPTER VI. 

Conduct of Mahomet after his marriage.—Becomes anxious for religious re¬ 
form. — His habits of solitary abstraction.—The vision of the cave.— His 
annunciation as a prophet. . . 39 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mahomet inculcates his doctrines secretly and slowly.—Receives further 
revelations and commands.—Announces it to his kindred —Manner in which 
it was received.—Enthusiastic devotion of Ali.—Christian portents. 44 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Outlines of the Mahometan faith. 48 

CHAPTER IX. 

Ridicule cast on Mahomet and his doctrines.—Demand for miracles—Conduct 
of Abu Taleb. — Violence of the Koreishites. — Mahomet’s daughter Rokaia, 
with her uncle Othman and a number of disciples, take refuge in Abyssinia. — 
Mahomet in the house of Orkham—Hostility of Abu Jahl; his punishment... 54 













6 


CONTEXTS. 


CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Omar Ibn al Kattab, nephew of Abu Jalil, undertakes to revenge his uncle by 
slaying Mahomet.—His wonderful conversion to the faith.—Mahomet takes 
refuge in a castle of Abu Taleb.—Abu Sofian, at the head of the rival branch 
of the Koreishites, persecutes Mahomet and his followers.—Obtains a decree 
of non-intercoux*se with them.—Mahomet leaves his retreat and makes con¬ 
verts during the month of pilgrimage.—Legend of the conversion of Habib 
the Wise. * . GO 

CHAPTER XI. 

The ban of non-intercourse mysteriously destroyed.—Mahomet enabled tc 
return to Mecca.—Death of Abu Taleb ; of Cadijah.—Mahomet betroths him¬ 
self to Ayesha —Marries Sawda.—The Koreishites renew their persecution.— 
Mahomet seeks an asylum in Tayef.—His expulsion thence.—Visited by genii 
in the desert of Naklah. 66 


CHAPTER XII. 

Kight journey of the prophet from Mecca to Jerusalem ; and thence to the 
seventh heaven. 72 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Mahomet makes converts of pilgrims from Medina.—Determines to fly to that 
city.—A plot to slay him.—His miraculous escape.—His Hegira, or flight.— 

His reception at Medina. 80 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Moslems in Medina, Mohadjerins and Ansarians.—The party of Abdallah Ibn 
Obba and the Hypocrites.—Mahomet builds a mosque ; preaches ; makes 
converts among the Christians.—The Jews slow to believe.— Brotherhood 
established between fugitives and allies . 88 


CHAPTER XV. 

Marriage of Mahomet with Ayesha.—Of his daughter Fatima with Ali.—Their 
household arrangements. 93 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The sword announced as the instrument of faith.—First foray against the 


Koreishites.—Surprisal of a caravan. 95 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The battle of Beder.. 99 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Death of the prophet’s daughter Rokaia.—Restoration of his daughter Zeinab. 
—Effect of the prophet's malediction on Abu Lahab and his family.—Frantic 
rage of Ilenda, the wife of Abu Sofian.—Mahomet narrowly escapes assassina¬ 
tion.—Embassy of the Koreishites.—The King of Abyssinia. 10G 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Growing power of Mahomet.—His resentment against the Jews.—Insult to an 
Arab damsel by the Jewish tribe of Kainoka,—A tumult.—The Beni Kainoka 











CONTENTS. 


7 

PAGE 

takes refuge in their castle.— Subdued and punished by confiscation and 
banishment.—Marriage of Othman to the prophet’s daughter Omm Kalthum, 
and of the prophet to Hafza. 109 


CHAPTER XX. 

Henda incites Abu Sofian and the Koreishites to revenge the death of her 
relations slain in the battle of Beder.—The Koreishites sally forth, followed 
by Henda and her female companions.—Battle of Ohod.—Ferocious triumph 
, of Henda.—Mahomet consoles himself by marrying Hend, the daughter of 
Omeya .. 112 


CHAPTER XXI. 

Treachery of certain Jewish tribes; their punishment.—Devotion of the 
prophet’s freedman Zeid ; divorces his beautiful wife Zeinab, that she may 
become the wife of the prophet. . 117 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Expedition of Mahomet against the Beni Mostalek.—He espouses Barra, a cap¬ 
tive.—Treachery of Abdallah Ibn Obba.—Ayesha slandered.—Her vindication. 
—Her innocence proved by a revelation. 120 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

The battle of the Moat.—Bravery of Saad Ibn Moad.—Defeat of the Koreishites. 

—Capture of the Jewish castle of Coraida.— Saad decides as to the punishment 
of the Jews.—Mahomet espouses Rehana, a Jewish captive.—His life endan¬ 
gered by sorcery ; saved bj 7 a revelation of the angel Gabriel. 124 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Mahomet undertakes a pilgrimage to Mecca.—Evades Khaled and a troop of 
horse sent against him.—Encamps near Mecca.—Negotiates with the Koreish¬ 
ites for permission to enter and complete his pilgrimage.—Treaty for ten 
years, by which he is permitted to make a yearly visit of three days.—He re¬ 
turns to Medina ..136 


CHAPTER XXV. 

Expedition against the city of Khaibar; siege.—Exploits of Mahomet’s cap¬ 
tains.—Battle of Ali and Marhab.—Storming of the citadel.—Ali makes a 
buckler of the gate.—Capture of the place.—Mahomet poisoned; he marries 
Safiya, a captive; also Omm Habiba, a widow. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Missions to various princes; to Heraclius; to Khosru II.; to the Prefect of 
Egypt.—Their result. • *. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Mahomet’s pilgrimage to Mecca; his marriage with Maimuna.—Khaled Ibn al 
Waled and Amru Ibn al Aass become proselytes . 


CHAPTER XXVm. 

A Moslem envoy slain in Syria— Expedition to avenge his death.—Battle of 
Muta.—Its results... 












8 


CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

PAGE 

Designs upon Mecca.—Mission of Abu Sofian.—Its result. 145 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Surprise and capture of Mecca. 147 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Hostilities in the mountains.—Enemy’s camp in the valley of Autas.—Battle at 
the pass of Honein.—Capture of the enemy’s camp.—Interview of Mahomet 
with the nurse of his childhood.—Division of spoil.—Mahomet at his mother’s 
grave... 157 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

Death of the prophet’s daughter Zeinab.—Birth of his son Ibrahim.—Deputa¬ 
tions from distant tribes.—Poetical contest in presence of the prophet.— 

His susceptibility to the charms of poetry.—Reduction of the city of Tayef ; 
destruction of its idols —Negotiation with Amir Ibn Tafiel, a proud Bedouin 
chief ; independent spirit of the latter.—Interview of Adi, another chief, with 
Mahomet... 164 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Preparations for an expedition against Syria.—Intrigues of Abdallah Ibn Obba. 

—Contributions of the faithful.—March of the army.—The accursed region of 
Hajar.—Encampment at Tabuc.—Subjugation of the neighboring provinces. 

—Ivhaled surprises Okaidor and his castle.—Return of the army to Medina— 170 

CHxAPTER XXXIV. 

Triumphal entry into Medina.—Punishment of those who had refused to join 
the campaign.—Effects of excommunication.—Death of Abdallah Ibn Obba — 
Dissensions in the prophet’s harem. 175 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

Abu Beker conducts the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca.—Mission of Ali to an¬ 
nounce a revelation.. 178 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Mahomet sends his captains on distant enterprises.—Appoints lieutenants to 
govern in Arabia Felix.—Sends Ali to suppress an insurrection in that pro¬ 
vince.—Death of the prophet’s only son Ibrahim.—His conduct at the death¬ 
bed and the grave.—His growing infirmities.—His valedictory pilgrimage to 


Mecca, and his conduct and preaching while there. 180 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Of the two false prophets A1 Aswad and Mosellma. 185 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

An army prepared to march against Syria.—Command given to Osama.—The 
prophet’s farewell address to the troops.—His last illness.—His sermons in the 
mosque.—His death and the attending circumstances. 188 











CONTENTS. 


9 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

PAGE 

Person and character of Mahomet, and speculations on his prophetic career.... 195 

APPENDIX. 

Of the Islam Faith. . 204 


PART II. 

Preface .. . 22 X 

CHAPTER I. 

Election of Abu Beker, first Caliph, Hegira 11th, a.d. 632. 221 

CHAPTER II. 

Moderation of Abu Beker.—Traits of his character.—Rebellion of Arab tribes.— 
Defeat and death of Malec Ibn Nowirah.—Harsh measures of Khaled con¬ 
demned by Omar, but excused by Abu Beker.—Khaled defeats Moseilma the 
false pi'ophet.—Compilation of the Koran. 228 

CHAPTER HI. 

Campaign against Syria.—Army sent under Yezed Ibn Abu Soflan.—Successes. 

—Another army under Ani rn Ibn al Aass.—Brilliant achievements of Khaled 
in Irak...232 

CHAPTER IV. 

Incompetency of Abu Obeidab to the general command in Syria.—Khaled sent 
to supersede him.—Peril of the Moslem army before Bosra.—Timely arrival 
of Khaled.—His exploits during the siege.—Capture of Bosra. 238 

CHAPTER V. 

Khaled lays siege to Damascus.243 

CHAPTER VI. 

Siege of Damascus continued.—Exploits of Derar.—Defeat of the imperial 
army. 247 

CHAPTER VII. 

Siege of Damascus continued.—Sally of the garrison.—Heroism of the Moslem 
women.. 250 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Battle of Aiznadin. 253 

CHAPTER IX. 

Occurrences before Damascus.—Exploits of Thomas.—Aban Ibn Zeid and his 
Amazonian wife. 259 
















10 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Surrender of Damascus—Disputes of the Saracen generals.—Departure of 
Thomas and the exiles. 203 


CHAPTER XI. 

Story of Jonas and Eudocea.—Pursuit of the exiles.—Death of the Caliph Abu 
Beker.. 2C7 


CHAPTER XII. 

Election of Omar, second Caliph.— Khaled superseded in command by Abu 
Obeidah.—Magnanimous conduct of those generals.—Expedition to the con¬ 
vent of Abyla. 275 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Moderate measures of Abu Obeidah.—Reproved by the Caliph for his slowness. 282 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Siege and capture of Baalbec. 286 

CHAPTER XV. 

Siege of Emessa.—Stratagems of the Moslems.—Fanatic devotion of Ikremah. 

—Surrender of the city. 290 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Advance of a powerful Imperial army.—Skirmishes of Khaled.—Capture of 


Derar.—Interview of Khaled and Manuel. .294 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The battl '• of Yermouk. 298 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Siege and capture of Jerusalem. 300 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Progress of the Moslem amis in Syria.—Siege of Aleppo.—Obstinate defence by 
Youkenna.—Exploit of Damas.—Capture of the castle.—Conversion of You- 
kenna. 397 


CHAPTER XX. 

Perfidy of Youkenna to his former friends.—Attempts the castle of Aazaz by 
treachery.—Capture of the castle.. 314 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Intrigues of Youkenna at Antioch.—Siege of that city by the Moslems.—Flight 


of the emperor to Constantinople.—Surrender of Antioch. 317 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Expedition into the mountains of Syria.-Story of a miraculous cap. 322 














CONTENTS. 


11 


CHAPTER XXIH. 

PAGE 

Expedition of Amru Ibn al Aass against Prince Constantine in Syria.—Their 
conference.—Capture of Tripoli and Tyre.—Flight of Constantine.—Death of 
Khaled. 325 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Invasion of Egypt by Amru.—Capture of Memphis.—Siege and surrender of 
Alexandria. —Burning of the Alexandrian library. 333 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Enterprises of the Moslems in Persia.—Defence of the kingdom by Queen Arze- 
mia.—Battle of the Bridge. 341 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Mosenna Ibn Haris ravages the country along the Euphrates.—Death of 
Arzemia.—Yezdegird IH. raised to the throne.—Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas given 
the general command.—Death of Mosenna.—Embassy to Yezdegird.—Its 
reception. 315 * 

CHAPTER XXVH. 

The battle of Kadesia. 350 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Founding of Bassora.—Capture of the Persian capital.—Flight of Yezdegird to 
Holwan. 353 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Capture of Jalula.—Flight of Yezdegird to Rei.—Founding of Cufa.—Saad 
receives a severe rebuke from the Caliph for his magnificence. 357 

CHAPTER XXX. 

War with Hormuzan, the Satrap of Ahwaz.—His conquest and conversion. 380 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Saad suspended from the command.—A Persian army assembled at Neliavend. 

—Council at the mosque of Medina.—Battle of Neliavend.363 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Capture of Hamadan; of Rei.—Subjugation of Tabaristan; of Azerbijan.—Cam¬ 
paign among the Caucasian mountains. 367 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The Caliph Omar assassinated by a fire-worshipper.—His character.—Othman 
elected Calip — h. 373 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Conclusion of the Persian conquest.—Flight and death of Yezdegird .377 















12 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

PjVGK 

Amru displaced from the government of Egypt.—Revolt of the inhabitants.— 
Alexandria retaken by the Imperialists.—Amru reinstated in command.—Re¬ 
takes Alexandria, and tranquillizes Egypt.—Is again displaced.—Abdallah Ibn 
Saad invades the north of Africa. 380 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Moawyah, Emir of Syria.—His naval victories.—Othman loses the prophet’s 
ring.—Suppresses erroneous copies of the Koran.—Conspiracies against him. 

—His death. 386 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Candidates for the Caliphat.—Inaguration of Ali, fourth Caliph—He under¬ 
takes measures of reform.—Their consequences.—Conspiracy of Ayesha.— 

She gets possession of Bassora.393 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Ali defeats the rebels under Ayesha.—His treatment of her. 401 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Battles between Ali and Moawyah.—Their claims to the Caliphat left to arbitra¬ 
tion; the x’esult.—Decline of the power of Ali.—Loss of Egypt.. 408 

CHAPTER XL. 

Preparations of Ali for the invasion of Syria.—His assassination. 413 

CHAPTER XLI. 

Succession of Hassan, fifth Caliph.—He abdicates in favor of Moawyah.416 

CHAPTER XLII. 

Reign of Moawyah I., sixth Caliph.—Account of his illegitimate brother Zeyad. 
—Death of Amru. 419 

CHAPTER XLin. 

Siege of Constantinople.—Truce with the emperor.—Murder of Hassan.—Death 
of Ayesha. 423 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

Moslem conquests in Northern Africa.—Achievements of Acbah ; his death.... 426 

CHAPTER XLV. 

Moawyah names his successor.—His last acts and death.—Traits of his char¬ 
acter . 430 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

Succession of Yezid, seventh Caliph.—Final fortunes of Hosein, the son of Ali.. 434 

CHAPTER XLVH. 

Insurrection of' Abdallah lbn Zobeir.—Medina taken and sacked.—Mecca 
besieged.—Death of Yezid. 444 













CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XLVHI. 


13 


PAGE 


Inauguration of Moawyah H., eighth Caliph.—His abdication and death.— Mer- 
wanlbn Hakem and Abdallah Ibn Zobeir, rival Caliphs.—Civil wars in Syria. 447 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

State of affairs in Khorassan.—Conspiracy at Cura.—Faction of the Penitents; 
their fortunes.—Death of the Caliph Merwan. 451 


CHAPTER L. 

Inauguration of Abd’almalec, the eleventh Caliph.—Story of A1 Moktar, the 
Avenger.454 


CHAPTER LI. 

Musab Ibn Zobeir takes possession of Babylonia.—Usurpation of Amru Ibn 
Saad; his death.—Expedition of Abd’almalec against Musab.—The result.— 
Omens; their effect upon Abd’almalec.—Exploits of A1 Mohalleb . 461 

CHAPTER LH. 

Abd’almalec makes war upon his rival Caliph in Mecca.—Siege of the sacred 


city.—Death of Abdallah.—Demolition and reconstruction of the Caaba. 465 

CHAPTER LHI. 

Administration of A1 Hejagi as emir of Babylonia.. 470 

CHAPTER LIY. 


Renunciation of tribute to the emperor.—Battles in Northern Africa.—The 
prophet queen Cahina; her achievements and fate. 478 

CHAPTER LV. 

Musa Ibn Nosseyr made emir of Northern Africa.—His campaigns against the 
Berbers. 482 


CHAPTER LVI. 


Naval enterprises of Musa —Cruisings of his son Abdolola.—Death of Abd’al¬ 
malec . 487 


CHAPTER LVII. 

Inauguration of Waled, twelfth Caliph.—Revival of the arts under his reign.— 

His taste for architecture.—Erection of mosques.—Conquests of his generals. 490 

CHAPTER LVIH. 

Further triumphs of Musa Ibn Nosseyr —Naval enterprises.—Descents in Sicily, 
Sardinia and Mallorca.—Invasion of Tingitania—Projects for the invasion of 
Spain.—Conclusion. 495 














MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS 


CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF ARABIA AND THE ARABS. 

During a long succession of ages, extending from the earliest 
period of recorded history down to the seventh century of the 
Christian era, that great Chersonese or peninsula formed by 
the Red Sea, the Euphrates, the Gulf of Persia, and the Indian 
Ocean, and known by the name of Arabia, remained unchanged 
and almost unaffected by the events which convulsed the rest 
of Asia, and shook Europe and Africa to their centre. While 
kingdoms and empires rose and fell; while ancient dynasties 
passed away; while the boundaries and names of- countries 
were changed, and their inhabitants were exterminated or 
carried into captivity, Arabia, though its frontier provinces 
experienced some vicissitudes, preserved in the depths of its 
deserts its primitive character and independence, nor had its 
nomadic tribes ever bent their haughty necks to servitude. 

The Arabs carry back the traditions of their countiy to the 
highest antiquity. It was peopled, they say, soon after the 
deluge, by the progeny of Shem, the son of Noah, who gradu¬ 
ally formed themselves into several tribes, the most noted of 
which are the Adites and Thamudites. All these primitive 
tribes are said to have been either swept from the earth in 
punishment of their iniquities, or obliterated in subsequent 
modifications of the races, so that little remains concerning 
them but shadowy traditions and a few passages in the Koran. 
They are occasionally mentioned in oriental history as the 
“ old primitive Arabians”—the “ lost tribes.” 

The primitive population of the peninsula is ascribed, by 
the same authorities, to Kahtan or Joctan, a descendant in the 
fourth generation from Shem. His posterity spread over the 



16 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


southern part of the peninsula and along the Red Sea. Yarab, 
one of his sons, founded the kingdom of Yemen, where the ter¬ 
ritory of Araba was called after him; whence the Arabs derive 
the names of themselves and their country. Jurham, another 
son, founded the kingdom of Hedjaz, over which his descend¬ 
ants bore sway for many generations. Among these people 
Hagar and her son Ishmael were kindly received, when exiled 
from their home by the patriarch Abraham. In the process of 
time Ishmael married the daughter of Modad, a reigning prince 
of the line of Jurham; and thus a stranger and a Hebrew be¬ 
came grafted on the original Arabian stock. It proved a vigor¬ 
ous graft. Ishmael’s wife bore him twelve sons, who acquired 
dominion over the country, and whose prolific race, divided 
into twelve tribes, expelled or overran and obliterated the 
primitive stock of Joctan. 

Such is the account given by the peninsular Arabs of their 
origin; * and Christian writers cite it as containing the fulfil¬ 
ment of the covenant of God with Abraham, as recorded in 
Holy Writ. “And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael 
might live before thee! And God said, As for Ishmael, I have 
heard thee. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him 
fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly: twelve princes 
shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation” (Genesis 17: 
18, 20). 

These twelve princes with their tribes are further spoken of 
in the Scriptures (Genesis 25 : 18) as occupying the country 
“from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest 
toward Assyriaa region identified by sacred geographers with 
part of Arabia. The description of them agrees with that of 
the Arabs of the present day. Some are mentioned as holding 
towns and castles, others as dwelling in tents, or having villages 
in the wilderness. Nebaiotli and Kedar, the two first-born of 
Ishmael, are most noted among the princes for their wealth in 
flocks and herds, and for the fine woo* of their sheep. From 
Nebaioth came the Nabathai who inhabited Stony Arabia; 


* Besides the Arabs of the peninsula, who were all of the f3hemitic race, there were 
others called Cushites, being descended from Cush the son of Ham. They inhabited 
the banks of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. The name of Cush is often given 
in Scripture to the Arabs generally as well as to their country. It must be the 
Arabs of this race who at present rqam the deserted regions of ancient Assyria, and 
have been employed recently in disinterring the long-buried ruins of Nineveh... They 
are sometimes distinguished as the Syro-Arabians. The present work relates only 
to the Arabs of the peninsula, or Arabia Proper. 





PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF ARABIA. 


17 


while the name of Kedar is occasionally given in Holy Writ to 
designate the whole Arabian nation. “Woe is me,'’ says the 
Psalmist, “that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents 
of Kedar. ” Both appear to have been the progenitors of the 
wandering or pastoral Arabs; the free rovers of the desert. 
“The wealthy nation,” says the prophet Jeremiah, “that 
dwelleth without care; which have neither gates nor bars* 
which dwell alone.” 

A strong distinction grew up in the earliest times between 
the Arabs who ‘‘held towns and castles,” and those who 
“dwelt in tents.” Some of the former occupied the fertile 
wadies, or valleys, scattered here and there among the moun¬ 
tains, where these towns and castles were surrounded by vine¬ 
yards and orchards, groves of palm-trees, fields of grain, and 
well-stocked pastures. They were settled in their habits, de¬ 
voting themselves to the cultivation of the soil and the breed¬ 
ing of cattle. 

Others of this class gave themselves up to commerce, having 
ports and cities along the Bed Sea; the southern shores of the 
peninsula and the Gulf of Persia, and carrying on foreign trade 
by means of ships and caravans. Such especially were the 
people of Yemen, or Arabia the Happy, that land of spices, 
perfumes, and frankincense; the Sabeea of the poets; the 
Sheba of the sacred Scriptures. They were among the most 
active mercantile navigators of the eastern seas. Their ships 
brought to their shores the myrrh and balsams of the opposite 
coast of Berbera, with the gold, the spices, and other rich com¬ 
modities of India and tropical Africa. These, with the prod¬ 
ucts of their own country, were transported by caravans across 
the deserts to the semi-Arabian states of Ammon, Moab, and 
Edom or Idumea to the Phoenician ports of the Mediterranean, 
and thence distributed to the western world. 

The camel has been termed the ship of the desert; the cara¬ 
van may be termed its fleet. The caravans of Yemen were 
generally fitted out, manned, conducted, and guarded by the 
nomadic Arabs, the dwellers in tents, who, in this respect, 
might be called the navigators of the desert. They furnished 
the innumerable camels required, and also contributed to the 
freight by the fine fleeces of their countless flocks. The writ¬ 
ings of the prophets show the importance, in scriptural times, 
of this inland chain of commerce by which the rich countries 
of the south, India, Ethiopia, and Arabia the Happy, were 
linked with ancient Syria. 


18 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Ezekiel, in his lamentations for Tyre, exclaims, “Arabia, 
and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, 
and rams, and goats; in these were they thy merchants. The 
merchants of Sheba and Eaamah occupied in thy fairs with 
chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold. 
Haran, and Canneh, and Eden,* the merchants of Sheba, As- 
shur, and Chehnad, were thy merchants.” And Isaiah, speak¬ 
ing to Jerusalem, says: “ The multitude of camels shall cover 
thee; the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from 
Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense. 

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; 
the rams of Nebaiotli shall minister unto thee” (Isaiah 60:6, 7). 

The agricultural and trading Arabs, however, the dwellers 
in towns and cities, have never been considered the true type 
of the race. They became softened by settled and peaceful 
occupations, and lost much of their original stamp by an inter¬ 
course with strangers. Yemen, too, being more accessible 
than the other parts of Arabia, and offering greater temptation 
to the spoiler, had been repeatedly invaded and subdued. 

It was among the other class of Arabs, the rovers of the desert, 
the “dwellers in tents,” by far the most numerous of the two, 
that the national character was preserved in all its primitive 
force and freshness. Nomadic in their habits, pastoral in their 
occupations, and acquainted by experience and tradition with 
all the hidden resources of the desert, they led a wandering 
life, roaming from place to place in quest of those wells and 
springs which had been the resort of their forefathers since the 
days of the patriarchs; encamping wherever they could find 
date-trees for shade, and sustenance and pasturage for their 
flocks, and herds, and camels; and shifting their abode when¬ 
ever the temporary supply was exhausted. 

These nomadic Arabs were divided and subdivided into 
innumerable petty tribes or families, each with its Sheikh or 
Emir, the representative of the patriarch of yore, whose spear, 
planted beside his tent, was the ensign of command. His 
office, however, though continued for many generations in the 
same family, was not strictly hereditary, but depended upon 
the good-will of the tribe. He might be deposed, and another 
of a different line elected in his place. His power, too, was 
limited, and depended upon his personal merit and the confi¬ 
dence reposed in him. His prerogative consisted in conducting 


* Haran, Canna, and Aden, ports on the Indian Sea. 





PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF ARABIA. 


19 


negotiations of peace and war; in leading his tribe against the 
enemy; in choosing the place of encampment, and in receding 
and entertaining strangers of note. Yet, even in these and 
similar privileges, he was controlled by the opinions and incli¬ 
nations of his people. * 

However numerous and minute might be the divisions of a 
tribe, the links of affinity were carefully kept in mind by the 
several sections. All the Sheikhs of the same tribe acknowl¬ 
edge a common chief called the Sheikh of Sheikhs, who, 
whether ensconced in a rock-built castle, or encamped amid his 
flocks and herds in the desert, might assemble under his 
standard all the scattered branches on any emergency affect¬ 
ing the common weal. 

The multiplicity of these wandering tribes, each with its 
petty prince and petty territory, but without a national head, 
produced frequent collisions. Revenge, too, was almost a 
religious principle among them. To avenge a relative slain 
was the duty of his family, and often involved the honor of 


* In summer the wandering Arabs, says Burckhardt, seldom remain above three 
or four days on the same spot: as soon as their cattle have consumed the herbage 
near a watering place, the tribe removes in search of pasture, and the grass again 
springing up, serves for a succeeding camp. The encampments vary in the 
number of tents, from six to eight hundred; when the tents are but few, they are 
pitched in a circle; but more considerable numbers in a straight line, or a row of 
single tents, especially along a rivulet, sometimes three or four behind as many 
others. In winter, when water and pasture never fail, the whole tribe spreads itself 
over the plain in parties of three or four tents each, with an interval of half an 
hour’s distance between each party. The Sheikh’s tent is always on the side on 
which enemies or guests may be expected. To oppose the former and to honor the 
latter, is the Sheikh’s principal business. Every father of a family sticks his lance 
into the ground by the side of his tent, and ties his horse in front. There also his 
camels repose at night.— Burckhardt, Notes on Bedouins , vol. i. p. 33. 

The following is descriptive of the Arabs of Assyria, though it is applicable, in a 
great degree, to the whole race : 

“It would be difficult to describe the appearance of a large tribe when migrating 
to new pastures. We soon found ourselves in the midst of wide-spreading flocks of 
sheep and camels. As far as the eye could reach, to the right, to the left, and in 
front, still the same moving crowd. Long lines of asses and bullocks, laden with 
black tents, huge caldrons, and variegated carpets; aged women and men, no 
longer able to walk, tied on the heap of domestic furniture: infants crammed into 
saddlebags, their tiny heads thrust through the narrow opening, balanced on the 
animal’s back by kids or lambs tied on the opposite side; young girls clothed only 
in the close-fitting Arab shirt which displayed rather than concealed their graceful 
forms; mothers with their children on their shoulders; boys driving flocks of lambs; 
horsemen armed with their long tufted spears, scouring the plain on their fleet 
mares; riders urging their dromedaries with their short hooked sticks, and leading 
their high-bred steeds by the halter; colts galloping among the throng—such was 
the motley crowd through which we had to wend our way.”— Latjard's Nineveh , i. 4. 



20 


MAHO.SET AJS'D Ills SUCCESSORS. 


his tribe; and these debts of blood sometimes remained unset* 
tied for generations, producing deadly feuds. 

The necessity of being always on the alert to defend his 
flocks and herds made the Arab of the desert familiar from his 
infancy with the exercise of arms. None could excel him in 
the use of the bow, the lance, and the scimitar, and the adroit 
and graceful management of the horse. He was a predatory 
warrior also; for though at times he was engaged in the ser¬ 
vice of the merchant, furnishing him with camels and guides 
and drivers for the transportation of his merchandise, he was 
more apt to lay contributions on the caravan or plunder it 
outright in its toilful progress through the desert. All this he 
regarded as a legitimate exercise of arms; looking down upon 
the gainful sons of traffic as an inferior race, debased by sordid 
habits and pursuits. 

Such was the Arab of the desert, the dweller in tents, in 
whom was fulfilled the prophetic destiny of his ancestor Ish- 
mael: ‘ ‘ He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every 
man, and every man’s hand against him.” * Nature had fitted 
him for his destiny. His form was light and meagre, but 
sinewy and active, and capable of sustaining great fatigue and 
hardship. He was temperate and even abstemious, requiring 
but little food, and that of the simplest kind. His mind, like 
his body, was light and agile. He eminently possessed the 
intellectual attributes of the Shemitic raco, penetrating sagac¬ 
ity, subtle wit, a ready conception, and a brilliant imagina¬ 
tion. His sensibilities were quick and acute, though not last¬ 
ing; a proud and daring spirit was stamped on his sallow 
visage and flashed from his dark and kindling eye. He was 
easily aroused by the appeals of eloquence, and charmed by 
the graces of poetry. Speaking a language copious in the 
extreme, the words of which have been compared to gems and 
flower3, he was naturally an orator; but he delighted in prov¬ 
erbs and apothegms, rather than in sustained flights of decla¬ 
mation, and was prone to convey his ideas in the oriental style 
by apologue and parable. 

Though a restless and predatory warrior, he was generous 
and hospitable. He delighted in giving gifts; his door was 
always open to the wayfarer, with whom he was ready to 
share his last morsel; and his deadliest foe, having once broken 


* Genesis 16 : 12. 



PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF ARABIA. 21 

bread with him, might repose securely beneath the inviolable 
sanctity of his tent. 

In religion the Arabs, in what they term the Days of Igno¬ 
rance, partook largely of the two faiths, the Sabean and the 
Magian, which at that time prevailed over the eastern world. 
The Sabean, however, was the one to which they most 
adhered. They pretended to derive it from Sabi the son of 
Seth, who, with his father and his brother Enoch, they sup¬ 
posed to be buried in the pyramids. Others derive the name 
from the Hebrew word, Saba, or the Stars, and trace the 
origin of the faith to the Assyrian shepherds, who as they 
watched their flocks by night on their level plains, and beneath 
their cloudless skies, noted the aspects and movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and formed theories of their good and evil 
influences on human affairs; vague notions which the Chal¬ 
dean philosophers and priests reduced to a system, supposed to 
be more ancient even than that of the Egyptians. 

By others it is derived from still higher authority, and 
claimed to be the religion of the antediluvian world. It sur¬ 
vived, say they, the deluge, and was continued among the 
patriarchs. It was taught by Abraham, adopted by his de¬ 
scendants, the children of Israel, and sanctified and confirmed 
in the tablets of the law, delivered unto Moses amid the thun¬ 
der and lightning of Mount Sinai. 

In its original state the Sabean faith was pure and spiritual; 
inculcating a belief in the unity of God, the doctrine of a 
future state of rewards and punishments, and the necessity of a 
virtuous and holy life to obtain a happy immortality. So pro¬ 
found was the reverence of the Sabeans for the Supreme 
Being, that they never mentioned his name, nor did they ven¬ 
ture to approach him, but through intermediate intelligences 
or angels. These were supposed to inhabit and animate the 
heavenly bodies, in the same way as the human body is inhab¬ 
ited and animated by a soul. They were placed in their 
respective spheres to supervise and govern the universe in sub¬ 
serviency to the Most High. In addressing themselves to the 
stars and other celestial luminaries, therefore, the Sabeans did 
not worship them as deities, but sought only to propitiate their 
angelic occupants as intercessors with the Supreme Being; 
looking up through these created things to God the great Cre¬ 
ator. 

By degrees this religion lost its original simplicity and 
purity, and became obscured by mysteries, and degraded by 


22 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


idolatries. The Sabeans, instead of regarding the heavenly 
bodies as the habitations of intermediate agents, worshipped 
them as deities; set up graven images in honor of them, in 
sacred groves and in the gloom of forests; and at length 
enshrined these idols in temples, and worshipped them as if 
instinct with divinity. The Sabean faith too underwent 
changes and modifications in the various countries through 
which it was diffused. Egypt has long been accused of reduc¬ 
ing it to the most abject state of degradation; the statues, 
hieroglyphics, and painted sepulchres of that mysterious coun¬ 
try, being considered records of the worship, not merely of 
celestial intelligences, but of the lowest order of created beings, 
and even of inanimate objects. Modern investigation and 
research, however, are gradually rescuing the most intellect¬ 
ual nation of antiquity from this aspersion, and as they slowly 
lift the veil of mystery which hangs over the tombs of Egypt, 
are discovering that all these apparent objects of adoration 
were but symbols of the varied attributes of the one Supreme 
Being, whose name was too sacred to be pronounced by mor¬ 
tals. Among the Arabs the Sabean faith became mingled with 
wild superstitions, and degraded by gross idolatry. Each 
tribe worshipped its particular star or planet, or set up its par¬ 
ticular idol. Infanticide mingled its horrors with their relig¬ 
ious rites. Among the nomadic tribes the birth of a daughter 
was considered a misfortune, her sex rendering her of little 
service in a wandering and predatory life, while she might 
bring disgrace upon her family by misconduct or captivity. 
Motives of unnatural policy, therefore, may have mingled 
with their religious feelings, in offering up female infants as 
sacrifices to their idols, or in burying them alive. 

The rival sect of Magians or G-uebres (fire worshippers), 
which, as we have said, divided the religious empire of the 
East, took its rise in Persia, where, after a while, its oral doc- 
trines were reduced to writing by its great prophet and 
teacher Zoroaster, in his volume of the Zendavesta. The 
creed, like that of the Sabeans, was originally simple and 
spiritual, inculcating a belief in one supreme and eternal God, 
in whom and by whom the universe exists: that he produced, 
through his creating word, two active principles, Ormusd, the 
principle or angel of light or good, and Ahriman, the principle 
or angel of darkness or evil: that these formed the world out 
of a mixture of their opposite elements, and were engaged in a 
perpetual contest in the regulation of its affairs. Hence the 


PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF ARABIA. 23 

vicissitudes of good and*evil, accordingly as the angel of light 
or darkness has the upper hand: this contest would continue 
until the end of the world, when there would be a general 
resurrection and a day of judgment; the angel of darkness 
and his disciples would then be banished to an abode of woeful 
gloom, and their opponents would enter the blissful realms of 
ever-during light. 

The primitive rites of this religion were extremely simple. 
The Magians had neither temples, altars, nor religious symbols 
of any kind, but addressed their prayers and hymns directly 
to the Deity, in what they conceived to be his residence, the 
sun. They reverenced this luminary as being his abode, and 
as the source of the light and heat of which all the other 
heavenly bodies were composed; and they kindled fires upon 
the mountain tops to supply light during its absence. Zoroas¬ 
ter first introduced the use of temples, wherein sacred fire, 
pretended to be derived from heaven, was kept perpetually 
alive through the guardianship of priests, who maintained a 
watch over it night and day. 

In process of time this sect, like that of the Sabeans, lost 
sight of the divine principle in the symbol, and came to wor¬ 
ship light or fire, as the real deity, and to abhor darkness as 
Satan or the devil. In their fanatic zeal, the Magians would 
seize upon unbelievers and offer them up in the flames to pro¬ 
pitiate their fiery deity. 

To the tenets of these two sects reference is made in that 
beautiful text of the wisdom of Solomon: ‘ ‘ Surely vain are all 
men by nature who are ignorant of God, and could not, by 
considering the work, acknowledge the work master; but 
deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of 
the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be 
gods, which govern the world.” 

Of these two faiths the Sabean, as we have before observed, 
was much the most prevalent among the Arabs; but in an 
extremely degraded form, mingled with all kinds of abuses, 
and varying among the various tribes. The Magian faith pre¬ 
vailed among those tribes which, from their frontier position, 
had frequent intercourse with Persia; while other tribes par¬ 
took of the superstitions and idolatries of the nations on which 
they bordered. 

Judaism had made its way into Arabia at an early period, 
but very vaguely and imperfectly. Still many of its rites and 
ceremonies, and fanciful traditions, became implanted in the 


24 


MAHOMET AND I1IS SUCCESSORS. 


country. At a later day, however, when Palestine was rav¬ 
aged by the Romans, and the city of Jerusalem taken and 
sacked, many of the Jews took refuge among the Arabs; be¬ 
came incorporated with the native tribes; formed themselves 
into communities; acquired possession of fertile tracts; built 
castles and strongholds, and rose to considerable power and 
influence. 

The Christian religion had likewise its adherents among the 
Arabs. St. Paul himself declares, in his epistle to the Gala¬ 
tians, that soon after he had been called to preach Christianity 
among the heathens, he “went into Arabia.” The dissensions, 
also, which rose in the Eastern church, in the early part of the 
third century, breaking it up into sects, each persecuting the 
others as it gained the ascendency, drove many into exile into 
remote parts of the East; filled the deserts of Arabia with 
anchorites, and planted the Christian faith among some of the 
principal tribes. 

The foregoing circumstances, physical and moral, may give 
an idea of the causes which maintained the Arabs for ages in 
an unchanged condition. While their isolated position and 
their vast deserts protected them from conquest, their internal 
feuds and their want of a common tie, political or religious, 
kept them from being formidable as conquerors. They were a 
vast aggregation of distinct parts; full of individual vigor, but 
wanting coherent strength. Although their nomadic life ren¬ 
dered them hardy and active; although the greater part of 
them were warriors from infancy, yet their arms were only 
wielded against each other, excepting some of the frontier 
tribes, which occasionally engaged as mercenaries in external 
wars. While, therefore, the other nomadic races of Central 
Asia, possessing no greater aptness for warfare, had, during a 
course of ages, successively overrun and conquered the civil¬ 
ized world, this warrior race, unconscious of its power, re¬ 
mained disjointed and harmless in the depths of its native 
deserts. 

The time at length arrived when its discordant tribes were 
to he united in one creed, and animated by one common 
cause; when a mighty genius was to arise, who should bring 
together these scattered limbs, animate them with his own 
enthusiastic and daring spirit, and lead them forth, a giant of 
the desert, to shake and overturn the empires of the earth. 


B1RT1I AND PARENTAGE OF MAHOMET. 


25 


CHAPTER II. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF MAHOMET—HIS INFANCY AND 
CHILDHOOD. 

Mahomet, the great founder of the faith of Islam, was born 
in Mecca, in April, in the year 569 of the Christian era. He 
was of the valiant and illustrious tribe of Koreish, of which 
there were two branches, descended from two brothers, Has- 
chem and Abd Schems. Haschem, the progenitor of Mahomet, 
was a great benefactor of Mecca. This city is situated in the 
midst of a barren and stony country, and in former times was 
often subject to scarcity of provisions. At the beginning of 
the sixth century, Haschem established two yearly caravans, 
one in the winter to South Arabia or Yemen; the other in the 
summer to Syria. By these means abundant supplies were 
brought to Mecca, as well as a great variety of merchandise. 
The city became a commercial mart, and the tribe of Koreish, 
which engaged largely in these expeditions, became wealthy 
and powerful. Haschem, at this time, was the guardian of 
the Caaba, the great shrine of Arabian pilgrimage and wor¬ 
ship, the custody of which was confided to none but the most 
honorable tribes and families, in the same manner as in old 
times the temple of Jerusalem was intrusted only to the care 
of the Levites. In fact, the guardianship of the Caaba was 
connected with civil dignities and privileges, and gave the 
holder of it the control of the sacred city. 

On the death of Haschem, his son, Abd al Motalleb, suc¬ 
ceeded to his honors, and inherited his patriotism. He de¬ 
livered the holy city from an invading army of troops and 
elephants, sent by the Christian princes of Abyssinia, who 
at that time held Yemen in subjection. These signal services 
rendered by father and son confirmed the guardianship of the 
Caaba in the line of Haschem, to the great discontent and 
envy of the fine of Abd Schems. 

Abd al Motalleb had several sons and daughters. Those of 
his sons who figure in history were, Abu Taleb, Abu Lahab, 
Abbas, Hamza, and Abdallah. The last named was the 
youngest and best beloved. He married Amina, a maiden 
of a distant branch of the same illustrious stock of Koreish. 


26 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


So remarkable was Abdallah for personal beauty and those 
qualities which win the affections of women, that, if Moslem 
traditions are to be credited, on the night of his marriage with 
Amina, two hundred virgins of the tribe of Koreish died of 
broken hearts. 

Mahomet was the first and only fruit of the marriage thus 
sadly celebrated. His birth, according to similar traditions 
with the one just cited, was accompanied by signs and por¬ 
tents announcing a child of wonder. His mother suffered 
none of the pangs of travail. At the moment of his coming 
into the world, a celestial light illumined the surrounding 
country, and the new-born child, raising his eyes to heaven, 
exclaimed: “God is great! There is no God but God, and I 
am his prophet.” 

Heaven and earth, we are assured, were agitated at his 
advent. The Lake Sawa shrank back to its secret springs, 
leaving its borders dry; while the Tigris, bursting its bounds, 
overflowed the neighboring lands. The palace of Khosru the 
King of Persia shook to its foundations, and several of its 
towers were toppled to the earth. In that troubled night 
Kadhi, or the Judge of Persia, beheld, in a dream, a feroci¬ 
ous camel conquered by an Arabian courser. He related his 
dream in the morning to the Persian monarch, and inter¬ 
preted it to portend danger from the quarter of Arabia. 

In the same eventful night the sacred fire of Zoroaster, 
which, guarded by the Magi, had burned without interrup¬ 
tion for upward of a thousand years, was suddenly extin¬ 
guished, and all the idols in the world fell down. The 
demons, or evil genii, which lurk in the stars and the signs 
of the zodiac, and exert a malignant influence over the chil¬ 
dren of men, were cast forth by the pure angels, and hurled, 
with their arch leader, Eblis, or Lucifer, into the depths of the 
sea. 

The relatives of the new-born child, say the like authorities, 
were fill with awe and wonder. His mother’s brother, an 
astrologer, cast his nativity, and predicted that he would rise 
to vast power, found an empire, and establish a new faith 
among men. His grandfather, Abd al Motalleb, gave a feast 
to the principal Koreishites, the seventh day after his birth, 
at which he presented this child, as the dawning glory of their 
race, and gave him the name of Mahomet (or Muhamed), 
indicative of his future renown. 

Such are the marvellous accounts given by Moslem writers 


BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF MAHOMET. 


27 


of the infancy of Mahomet, and we have little else than similar 
fables about his early years. He was scarce two months old 
when his father died, leaving him no other inheritance than 
five camels, a few sheep, and a female slave of Ethiopia, 
named Barakat. His mother, Amina, had hitherto nurtured 
him, but care and sorrow dried the fountains of her breast, 
and the air of Mecca being unhealthy for children, she sought 
a nurse for him among the females of the neighboring Bedouin 
tribes. These were accustomed to come to Mecca twice a year, 
in spring and autumn, to foster the children of its inhabitants; 
but they looked for the offspring of the rich, where they were 
sure of ample recompense, and turned with contempt from 
this heir of poverty. At length Halema, the wife of a Saadite 
shepherd, was moved to compassion, and took the helpless 
infant to her home. It was in one of the pastoral valleys of 
the mountains.* 

Many were the wonders related by Halema’ of her infant 
charge. On the journey from Mecca, the mule which bore 
him became miraculously endowed with speech, and pro¬ 
claimed aloud that he bore on his back the greatest of 
prophets, the chief of ambassadors, the favorite of the Al¬ 
mighty. The sheep bowed to him as he passed; as he lay 
in his cradle and gazed at the moon it stooped to him in 
reverence. 

The blessing of heaven, say the Arabian writers, rewarded 
the charity of Halema. While the child remained under her 
roof, everything around her prospered. The wells and springs 
were never dried up; the pastures were always green; her 
flocks and herds increased tenfold; a marvellous abundance 
reigned over her fields, and peace prevailed in her dwelling. 

The Arabian legends go on to extol the almost supernatural 
powers, bodily and mental, manifested by this wonderful child 
at a very early age. He could stand alone when three months 
old; run abroad when he was seven, and at ten could join 
other children in their sports with bows and arrows. At eight 
months he could speak so as to be understood; and in the 
course of another month could converse with fluency, display¬ 
ing a wisdom astonishing to all who heard him. 


* The Beni Sad (or children of Sad) date from the most remote antiquity, and 
with the Katan Arabs, are the only remnants of the primitive tribes of Arabia. 
Their valley is among the mountains which range southwardly from the Tayef.— 
Burckhardt on the Bedouins , vol. ii. p. 47. 



28 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


At the age of three years, while playing in the fields with 
his foster-brother, Masroud, two angels in shining apparel 
appeared before them. They laid Mahomet gently upon the 
ground, and Gabriel, one of the angels, opened his breast, but 
without inflicting any pain. Then taking forth his heart, he 
cleansed it from all impurity, wringing from it those black 
and bitter drops of original sin, inherited from our forefather 
Adam, and which lurk in the hearts of the best of his descend¬ 
ants, inciting them to crime. When he had thoroughly puri¬ 
fied it, he filled it with faith and knowledge and prophetic 
light, and replaced it in the bosom of the child. Now, we are 
assured by the same authorities, began to emanate from his 
countenance that mysterious light which had continued down 
from Adam, through the sacred line of prophets, until the time 
of Isaac and Ishmael; but which had lain dormant in the de¬ 
scendants of the latter, until it thus shone forth with renewed 
radiance from the features of Mahomet. 

At this supernatural visitation, it is added, was impressed 
between the shoulders of the child the seal of prophecy, which 
continued throughout life the symbol and credential of his 
divine mission; though unbelievers saw nothing in it but a 
large mole, the size of a pigeon’s egg. 

When the marvellous visitation of the angel was related to 
Halema and her husband, they were alarmed lest some misfor¬ 
tune should be impending over the child, or that his super¬ 
natural visitors might be of the race of evil spirits or genii, 
which haunt the solitudes of the desert, wreaking mischief on 
the children of men. His Saadite nurse, therefore, carried 
him back to Mecca, and delivered him to his mother Amina. 

He remained with his parent until his sixth year, when she 
took him with her to Medina, on a visit to her relatives of the 
tribe of Adij, but on her journey homeward she died, and was 
buried at Abwa, a village between Medina and Mecca. Her 
grave, it will be found, was a place of pious resort and tender 
recollection to her son, at the latest period of his life. 

The faithful Abyssinian slave, Barakat, now acted as a 
mother to the orphan child, and conducted him to his grand¬ 
father Abd al Motalleb, in whose household he remained for 
two years, treated with care and tenderness. Abd al Motalleb 
was now well stricken in years; having outlived the ordinary 
term of human existence. Finding his end approaching, he 
called to him his eldest son, Abu Taleb, and bequeathed Ma¬ 
homet to his especial protection. The good Abu Taleb took his 


TRADITIONS CONCERNING MECCA. 


29 


nephew to his bosom, and ever afterward was to him as a 
parent. As the former succeeded to the guardianship of the 
Caaba at the death of his father, Mahomet continued for 
several years in a kind of sacerdotal household, where the 
rites and ceremonies of the sacred house were rigidly observed. 
And here we deem it necessary to give a more especial notice 
of the alleged origin of the Caaba, and of the rites and tradi¬ 
tions and superstitions connected with it, closely interwoven 
as they are with the faith of Islam and the story of its founder. 


CHAPTER III. 

TRADITIONS CONCERNING MECCA AND THE CAABA. 

When Adam and Eve were cast forth from Paradise, say 
Arabian traditions, they fell in different parts of the earth; 
Adam on a mountain of the island of Serendib, or Ceylon; Eve 
in Arabia on the borders of the Red Sea, where the port of 
Jqddah is now situated. For two hundred years they wan¬ 
dered separate and lonely about the earth, until, in considera¬ 
tion of their penitence and wretchedness, they were permitted 
to come together again on Mount Arafat, not far from the 
present city of Mecca. In the depth of his sorrow and repent¬ 
ance, Adam, it is said, raised his hands and eyes to heaven, 
and implored the clemency of God; entreating that a shrine 
might be vouchsafed to *him similar to that at which he had 
worshipped when in Paradise, and round which the angels used 
to move in adoring processions. 

The supplication of Adam was effectual. A tabernacle or 
temple formed of radiant clouds was lowered down by the 
hands of angels, and placed immediately below its prototype 
in the celestial paradise. Toward this heaven-descended shrine 
Adam thenceforth turned when in prayer, and round it he 
daily made seven circuits in imitation of the rites of the ador¬ 
ing angels. 

At the death of Adam, say the same traditions, the taber¬ 
nacle of clouds passed away, or was again drawn up to heaven; 
but another, of the same form and in the same place, was built 
of stone and clay by Seth, the son of Adam. This was swept 
away by the deluge. Many generations afterward, in the time 



80 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


of the patriarchs, when Hagar and her child Ishmael were near 
perishing with thirst in the desert, an angel revealed to them a 
spring or well of water, near to the ancient site of the taber¬ 
nacle. This was the well of Zem Zem, held sacred by the pro¬ 
geny of Ishmael to the present day. Shortly afterward two 
individuals of the gigantic race of the Amalekites, in quest of 
a camel which had strayed from their camp, discovered this 
well, and, having slaked their thirst, brought their companions 
to the place. Here they founded the city of Mecca, taking 
Ishmael and his mother under their protection. They were 
soon expelled by the proper inhabitants of the country, among 
whom Ishmael remained. When grown to man’s estate, he 
married the daughter of the ruling prince, by whom he had a 
numerous progeny, the ancestors of the Arabian people. In 
process of time, by God’s command he undertook to rebuild 
the Caaba, on the precise site of the original tabernacle of 
clouds. In this pious work he was assisted by his father Abra¬ 
ham. A miraculous stone served Abraham as a scaffold, 
rising and sinking with him as he built the walls of the sacred 
edifice. It still remains there an inestimable relic, and the 
print of the patriarch’s foot is clearly to be perceived on it by 
all true believers. 

While Abraham and Ishmael were thus occupied, the angel 
Gabriel brought them a stone, about which traditional ac¬ 
counts are a little at variance; by some it is said to have been 
one of the precious stones of Paradise, which fell to the earth 
with Adam, and was afterward lost in the slime of the deluge, 
until retrieved by the angel Gabriel. The more received tra¬ 
dition is, that it was originally the guardian angel appointed 
to watch over Adam in Paradise, but changed into a stone and 
ejected thence with him at his fall, as a punishment for not hav¬ 
ing been more vigilant. This stone Abraham and Ishmael re¬ 
ceived with proper reverence, and inserted it in a comer of the 
exterior wall of the Caaba, where it remains to the present day, 
devoutly kissed by worshippers each time they make a circuit 
of the temple. When first inserted in the wall it was, we are 
told, a single jacinth of dazzling whiteness, but became gradu¬ 
ally blackened by the kisses of sinful mortals. At the resur¬ 
rection it will recover its angelic form, and stand forth a testi¬ 
mony before God in favor of those who have faithfully 
performed the rites of pilgrimage. 

Such are the Arabian traditions, which rendered the Caaba 
and the well of Zem Zem objects of extraordinary veneration 


TRADITIONS CONCERNING MECCA. 


31 


from the remotest antiquity among the people of the East, 
and especially the descendants of Ishmael. Mecca, which in¬ 
closes these sacred objects within its walls, was a holy city 
many ages before the rise of Mahometanism, and was the re¬ 
sort of pilgrims from all parts of Arabia. So universal and 
profound was the religious feeling respecting this observance, 
that four months in every year were devoted to the rites of 
pilgrimage, and held sacred from all violence and warfare. 
Hostile tribes then laid aside their arms; took the heads from 
their spears; traversed the late dangerous deserts in secu¬ 
rity ; thronged the gates of Mecca clad in the pilgrim’s garb; 
made their seven circuits round the Caaba in imitation of the 
angelic host; touched and kissed the mysterious black stone; 
drank and made ablutions at the well Zem Zem in memory 
of their ancestor Ishmael; and having performed all the other 
primitive rites of pilgrimage returned home in safety, again to 
resume their weapons and their wars. 

Among the religious observances of the Arabs in these their 
‘‘days of ignorance;” that is to say, before the promulgation 
of the Moslem doctrines, fasting and prayer had a foremost 
place. They had three principal fasts within the year; one of 
seven, one of nine, and one of thirty days. They prayed three 
times each day; about sunrise, at noon, and about sunset; 
turning their faces in the direction of the Caaba, which was 
their kebla, or point of adoration. They had many religious 
traditions, some of them acquired in early times from the 
Jews, and they are said to have nurtured their devotional 
feelings with the book of Psalms, and with a book said to be 
by Seth, and filled with moral discourses. 

Brought up, as Mahomet was, in the house of the guardian 
of the Caaba, the ceremonies and devotions connected with 
the sacred edifice may have given an early bias to his mind, 
and inclined it to those speculations in matters of religion by 
which it eventually became engrossed. Though his Moslem 
biographers would fain persuade us his high destiny was 
clearly foretold in his childhood by signs and prodigies, yet 
his education appears to have been as much neglected as that 
of ordinary Arab children; for we find that he was not taught 
either to read or write. He was a thoughtful child, however; 
quick to observe, prone to meditate on all that he observed, 
and possessed of an imagination fertile, daring, and expansive. 
The yearly influx of pilgrims from distant parts made Mecca a 
receptacle for all kinds of floating knowledge, which he 


32 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


appears to have imbibed with eagerness and retained in a 
tenacious memory; and as he increased in years, a more 
extended sphere of observation was gradually opened to him. 


CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST JOURNEY OF MAHOMET WITH THE CARAVAN TO SYRIA. 

Mahomet was now twelve years of age, but, as we have 
shown, he had an intelligence far beyond his years. The 
spirit of inquiry was awake within him, quickened by inter¬ 
course with pilgrims from all parts of Arabia. His uncle Abu 
Taleb, too, beside his sacerdotal character as guardian of the 
Caaba, was one of the most enterprising merchants of the 
tribe of Koreish, and had much to do with those caravans set 
on foot by his ancestor Haschem, which traded to Syria and 
Yemen. The arrival and departure of those caravans, which 
thronged the gates of Mecca and filled its streets with pleasing 
tumult, were exciting events to a youth like Mahomet, and 
carried his imagination to foreign parts. He could no longer 
repress the ardent curiosity thus aroused; but once, when his 
uncle was about to mount his camel to depart with the caravan 
for Syria, clung to him, and entreated to be permitted to ac¬ 
company him: “ For who, oh my uncle,” said he, ‘‘will take 
care of me when thou art away?” 

The appeal was not lost upon the kind-hearted Abu Taleb. 
He bethought him, too, that the youth was of an age to enter 
upon the active scenes of Arab life, and of a capacity to render 
essential service in the duties of the caravan; he readily, 
therefore, granted his prayer, and took him with him on the 
journey to Syria. 

The route lay through regions fertile in fables and traditions, 
which it is the delight of the Arabs to recount in the evening 
halts of the caravan. The vast solitudes of the desert, in 
which that wandering people pass so much of their lives, are 
prone to engender superstitious fancies; they have accordingly 
peopled them with good and evil genii, and clothed them with 
tales of enchantment, mingled up with wonderful events 
which happened in days of old. In these evening halts of the 
caravan, the youthful mind of Mahomet doubtless imbibed 



FIRST JOURNEY OF MAHOMET. 


33 


many of those superstitions of the desert which ever after¬ 
ward dwelt in his memory, and had a powerful influence over 
his imagination. We may especially note two traditions 
which he must have heard at this time, and which we find 
recorded by him in after years in the Koran. One related to 
the mountainous district of Hediar. Here, as the caravan 
wound its way through silent and deserted valleys, caves were 
pointed out in the sides of the mountains once inhabited by 
the Beni Thamud, or children of Thamud, one of the “lost 
tribes” of Arabia; and this was the tradition concerning 
them. 

They were a proud and gigantic race, existing before the 
time of the patriarch Abraham. Having fallen into blind 
idolatry, God sent a prophet of the name of Saleh, to restore 
them to the right way. They refused, however, to listen to 
him unless he should prove the divinity of his mission by 
causing a camel, big with young, to issue from the entrails of 
a mountain. Saleh accordingly prayed, and lo! a rock opened, 
and a female camel came forth, which soon produced a foal. 
Some of the Thamudites were convinced by the miracle, and 
were converted by the prophet from their idolatry; the greater 
part, however, remained in unbelief. Saleh left the camel 
among them as a sign, warning them that a judgment from 
heaven would fall on them, should they do her any harm. 
For a time the camel was suffered to feed quietly in their 
pastures, going forth in the morning and returning in the 
evening. It is true, that when she bowed her head to drink 
from a brook or well, she never raised it until she had drained 
the last drop of water; but then in return she yielded milk 
enough to supply the whole tribe. As, however, she frightened 
the other camels from the pasture, she became an object of 
offence to the Thamudites, who hamstrung and slew her. 
Upon this there was a fearful cry from heaven, and great claps 
of thunder, and in the morning all the offenders were found 
lying on their faces, dead. Thus the whole race was swept 
from the earth, and their country was laid forever afterward 
under the ban of heaven. 

This story made a powerful impression on the mind of Ma¬ 
homet, insomuch that in after years he refused to let his 
people encamp in the neighborhood, but hurried them away 
from it as an accursed region. 

Another tradition, gathered on this journey, related to the 
city of Eyla, situated near the Red Sea. This place, he was 


34 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


told, had been inhabited in old times by a tribe of Jews, who 
lapsed into idolatry and profaned the Sabbath, by fishing on 
that sacred day; whereupon the old men were transformed 
into swine, and the young* men into monkeys. 

We have noted these two traditions especially because they 
are both cited by Mahomet as instances of divine judgment on 
the crime of idolatry, and evince the bias his youthful mind 
was already taking on that important subject. 

Moslem writers tell us, as usual, of wonderful circumstances 
which attended the youth throughout this journey, giving 
evidence of the continual guardianship of heaven. At on^ 
time, as he traversed the burning sands of the desert, an angel 
hovered over him unseen, sheltering him with his wings; a 
miracle, however, which evidently does not rest on the evi¬ 
dence of an eye-witness; at another time he was protected by 
a cloud which hung over his head during the noontide heat; 
and on another occasion, as he sought the scanty shade of a 
withered tree, it suddenly put forth leaves and blossoms. 

After skirting the ancient domains of the Moabites and the 
Ammonites, often mentioned in the sacred Scriptures, the 
caravan arrived at Bosra, or Bostra, on the confines of Syria, 
in the country of the tribe of Manasseh, beyond the Jordan. 
In Scripture days it had been a city of the Levites, but now 
was inhabited by Nestorian Christians. It was a great mart, 
annually visited by the caravans; and here our wayfarers 
came to a halt, and encamped near a convent of Nestorian 
monks. 

By this fraternity Abu Taleb and his nephew were enter¬ 
tained with great hospitality. One of the monks, by some 
called Sergius, by others Bahira,* on conversing with Ma¬ 
homet, was surprised at the precocity of his intellect, and 
interested by his eager desire for information, which appears 
to have had reference, principally, to matters of religion. 
They had frequent conversations together on such subjects, 
in the course of which the efforts of the monk must have been 
mainly directed against that idolatry in which the youthful 
Mahomet had hitherto been educated; for the Nestorian Chris¬ 
tians were strenuous in condemning not merely the worship 
of images, but even the casual exhibition of them; indeed, so 
far did they carry their scruples on this point, that even the 


* Some assert that these two names indicate two monks who held conversations 
with Mahomet. 



FIRST JOURNEY OF MAHOMET. 35 

cross, that general emblem of Christianity, was in a great 
degree included in this prohibition. 

Many have ascribed that knowledge of the principles and 
traditions of the Christian faith displayed by Mahomet in 
after life, to those early conversations with this monk; it is 
probable, however, that he had further intercourse with the 
latter in the course of subsequent visits which he made to 
Syria. 

Moslem writers pretend that the interest taken by the monk 
in the youthful stranger arose from his having accidentally 
perceived between his shoulders the seal of prophecy. He 
warned Abu Taleb, say they, when about to set out on his 
return to Mecca, to take care that his nephew did not fall into 
the hands of the Jews; foreseeing with the eye of prophecy 
the trouble and opposition he was to encounter from that 
people. 

It required no miraculous sign, however, to interest a secta¬ 
rian monk, anxious to make proselytes, in an intelligent and 
inquiring youth, nephew of the guardian of the Caaba, who 
might carry back with him to Mecca the seeds of Christianity 
sown in his tender mind; and it was natural that the monk 
should be eager to prevent his hoped-for convert, in the pres¬ 
ent unsettled state of his religious opinions, from being be¬ 
guiled into the Jewish faith. 

Mahomet returned to Mecca, his imagination teeming with 
the wild tales and traditions picked up in the desert, and his 
mind deeply impressed with the doctrines imparted to him in 
the Nestorian convent. He seems ever afterward to have 
entertained a mysterious reverence for Syria, probably from 
the religious impressions received there. It was the land 
whither Abraham the patriarch had repaired from Chaldea, 
taking with him the primitive worship of the one true God. 
“ Verily,” he used to say in after years, “ God has ever main¬ 
tained guardians of his word in Syria; forty in number; when 
one dies another is sent in his room; and through them the 
land is blessed.” And again: “Joy be to the people of Syria, 
for the angels of the kind God spread their wings over them.”* 

Note —The conversion of Abraham from the idolatry into which the world had 
fallen after the deluge is related in the sixth chapter of the Koran. Abraham’s 
father, Azer, or Zerah, as his name is given in the Sci’iptures, was a statuary and an 
idolater. 


* Mischat-ul-Masabih, vol. ii. p. 812. 



36 


MAHOMET AND HIS 8ECCESS0BS. 


“ And Abraham said unto his father Azer, ‘ Why dost thou take graven images 
for gods? Verily, thou and thy people are in error. ’ 

“ Then was the firmament of heaven displayed unto Abraham, that he might see 
how the world was governed. 

“ When night came, and darkness overshadowed the earth, he beheld a bright 
star shining in the firmament, and cried out to his people who were astrologers, 
‘This, according to your assertions, is the Lord.’ 

“ But the star set, and Abraham said, ‘ I have no faith in gods that set 1 
“ He beheld the moon rising, and exclaimed, ‘Assuredly, this is the Lord.’ But 
the moon likewise set, and he was confounded, and prayed unto God, saying, 
; Direct me, lest I become as one of these people, who go astray.’ 

“When he saw the sun rising, he cried out, ‘This is the most glorious of all; this 
of a certainty is the Lord.’ But the sun also set. Then said Abraham, ‘I believe 
not, oh my people, in those things which ye call gods. Verily, I turn my face unttf 
Him, the Creator, who hath formed both the heavens and the earth.’ ” 


CHAPTER V. 

COMMERCIAL OCCUPATIONS OF MAHOMET—HIS MARRIAGE WITH 

CADIJAH. 

Mahomet was now completely launched in active life, ac¬ 
companying his uncles in various expeditions. At one time, 
when about sixteen years of age, we find him with his uncle 
Zobier, journeying with the caravan to Yemen; at another 
time acting as armor-bearer to the same uncle, who led a war¬ 
like expedition of Koreishites in aid of the Kenanites against 
the tribe of Hawazan. This is cited as Mahomet’s first essay 
in arms, though he did little else than supply his uncle with 
arrows in the heat of the action, and shield him from the darts 
of the enemy. It is stigmatized among Arabian writers as 
al Fad jar, or the impious war, having been carried on during 
the sacred months of pilgrimage. 

As Mahomet advanced in years he was employed by different 
persons as commercial agent or factor in caravan journeys to 
Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere; all which tended to enlarge the 
sphere of his observation, and to give him a quick insight into 
character and a knowledge of human affairs. 

He was a frequent attender of fairs also, which, in Arabia, 
were not always mere resorts of traffic, but occasionally scenes 
of poetical contests between different tribes, where prizes were 
adjudged to the victors, an I their prize poems treasured up in 
the archives of princes. Such, especially, was the case with 
the fair of Ocadh; and seven of the prize poems adjudged 



COMMERCIAL OCCUPATIONS OF MAHOMET. 87 

there were hung up as trophies in the Caaba. At these fairs, 
also, were recited the popular traditions of the Arabs, and incul¬ 
cated the various religious faiths which were afloat in Arabia. 
From oral sources of this kind Mahomet gradually accum 
ulated much of that varied information as to creeds and doc¬ 
trines which he afterward displayed. 

There was at this time residing in Mecca a widow, named 
Cadijah (or Khadijah), of the tribe of Koreish. She had been 
twice married. Her last husband, a wealthy merchant, Pad 
recently died, and the extensive concerns of the house were in 
need of a conductor. A nephew of the widow, named Chu- 
zima, had become acquainted with Mahomet in the course of 
his commercial expeditions, and had noticed the ability and 
integrity with which he acquitted himself on all occasions. 
He pointed him out to his aunt as a person well qualified to 
be her factor. The personal appearance of Mahomet may have 
strongly seconded this recommendation; for he was now about 
twenty-five years of age, and extolled by Arabian writers for 
his manly beauty and engaging manners. So desirous was 
Cadi jah of securing his services, that she offered him double 
wages to conduct a caravan which she was on the point of 
sending off to Syria. Mahomet consulted his uncle Abu Taleb, 
and by his advice accepted the offer. He was -accompanied 
and aided in the expedition by the nephew of the widow, and 
by her slave Maisara, and so highly satisfied was Cadi jah with 
the way in which he discharged his duties, that, on his return, 
she paid him double the amount of his stipulated wages. She 
afterward sent him to the southern parts of Arabia on similar 
expeditions, in all which he gave like satisfaction. 

Cadi j ah was now in her fortieth year, a woman of judgment 
and experience. The mental qualities of Mahomet rose more 
and more in her estimation, and her heart began to yearn 
toward the fresh and comely youth. According to Arabian 
legends, a miracle occurred most opportunely to confirm and 
sanctify the bias of her inclinations. She was one day with her 
handmaids, at the hour of noon, on the terraced roof of her 
dwelling, watching the arrival of a caravan conducted by Ma¬ 
homet. As it approached, she beheld, with astonishment, two 
angels overshadowing him with their wings to protect him 
from the sun. Turning, with emotion, to her handmaids, ‘ ‘ Be¬ 
hold!” said she, “ the beloved of Allah, who sends two angels 
to watch over him!” 

Whether or not the handmaidens looked forth with the same 


38 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS 


eyes of devotion as their mistress, and likewise discerned the 
angels, the legend does not mention. Suffice it to say, the 
widow was filled with a lively faith in the superhuman merits 
of her youthful steward, and forthwith commissioned her 
trusty slave, Maisara, to offer him her hand. The negotiation 
is recorded with simple brevity. “Mahomet,” demanded Mai- 
sara, “ why dost thou not marry?” “I have not the means,” 
replied Mahomet. “Well, but if a wealthy dame should offer 
thee her hand; one also who is handsome and of high birth?” 
‘ ‘ And who is she ?” ‘ ‘ Cadijah!” “ How is that possible ?” ‘ ‘ Let 
me manage it.” Maisara returned to his mistress and reported 
what had passed. An hour was appointed for an interview, 
and the affair was brought to a satisfactory arrangement with 
that promptness and sagacity which had distinguished Ma¬ 
homet in all his dealings with the widow. The father of Cadi¬ 
jah made some opposition to the match, on account of the 
poverty of Mahomet, following the common notion that wealth 
should be added to wealth; but the widow 1 wisely considered 
her riches only as the means of enabling her to follow the dic¬ 
tates of her heart. She gave a great feast, to which were in¬ 
vited her father and the rest of her relatives, and Mahomet’s 
uncles Abu Taleb and Hamza, together with several others 
of the Korei^Jiites. At this banquet wine was served in abun¬ 
dance, and soon diffused good humor round the board. The 
objections to Mahomet’s poverty were forgotten; speeches 
were made by Abu Taleb on the one side, and by Waraka, a 
kinsman of Cadijah, on the other, in praise of the proposed 
nuptials; the dowry was arranged, and the marriage formally 
concluded. 

Mahomet then caused a camel to be killed before his door, 
and the flesh distributed among the poor. The house was 
thrown open to all comers; the female slaves of Cadijah 
danced to the sound of timbrels, and all was revelry and re¬ 
joicing. Abu Taleb, forgetting his age and his habitual melan¬ 
choly, made merry on the occasion. He had paid down from 
his purse a dower of twelve and a hall okks of gold, equivalent 
to twenty young camels. Halema, who had nursed Mahomet 
in his infancy, was summoned to rejoice at his nuptials, and 
was presented with a flock of forty sheep, with which she re¬ 
turned, enriched and contented, to her native valley, in tbs 
desert of the Saadites. 


CONDUCT OF MAHOMET AFTER HIS MARRIAGE. 39 


CHAPTER VI. 

CONDUCT OF MAHOMET AFTER HIS MARRIAGE—BECOMES ANXIOUS 
FOR RELIGIOUS REFORM—HIS HABITS OF SOLITARY ABSTRAC¬ 
TION—THE VISION OF THE CAVE—HIS ANNUNCIATION AS A 
PROPHET. 

The marriage with Cadijah placed Mahomet among the 
most wealthy of his native city. -His moral worth also gave 
him great influence in the community. Allah, says the his¬ 
torian Abulfeda, had endowed him with every gift necessary 
to accomplish and adorn an honest man; he was so pure and 
sincere; so free from every evil thought, that he was com¬ 
monly known by the name of A 1 Amin, or The Faithful. 

The great confidence reposed in his judgment and probity 
caused him to be frequently referred to as arbiter in disputes 
between his townsmen. An anecdote is given as illustrative of 
his sagacity on such occasions. The Caaba having been in¬ 
jured by fire, was undergoing repairs, in the course of which 
the sacred black stone was to be replaced. A dispute arose 
among the chiefs of the various tribes, as to ^#hich was en¬ 
titled to perform so august an office, and they agreed to abide 
by the decision of the first person who should enter by the 
gate al Haram. That person happened to be Mahomet. Upon 
hearing their different claims, he directed that a great cloth 
should be spread upon the ground, and the stone laid thereon; 
and that a man from each tribe should take hold of the border 
of the cloth. In this way the sacred stone was raised equally 
and at the same time by them all to a level with its allotted 
place, in which Mahomet fixed it with his own hands. 

Four daughters and one son were the fruit of the marriage 
with Cadijah. The son was named Kasim, whence Mahomet 
was occasionally called Abu Kasim, or the father of Kasim, 
according to Arabian nomenclature. This son, however, died 
in his infancy. 

For several years after his marriage he continued in com¬ 
merce, visiting the great Arabian fairs, and making distant 
journeys with the caravans. His expeditions were not as 
profitable as in the days of his stewardship, and the wealth 
acquired with his wife diminished rather than increased 


40 


MAHOMET AND HiS SUCCESSORS. 


in the course of his operations. That wealth, in fact, had 
raised him above the necessity of toiling for subsistence, and 
given him leisure to indulge the original bias of his mind; a 
turn for reverie and religious speculation, which he had 
evinced from his earliest years. This had been fostered in the 
course of his journeyings, by his intercourse with Jews and 
Christians, originally fugitives from persecution, but now 
gathered into tribes, or forming part of the population of 
cities. The Arabian deserts, too, rife as we have shown them 
with fanciful superstitions, had furnished aliment for his 
enthusiastic reveries. Since his marriage with Cadijah, also, 
he had a household oracle to influence him in his religious 
opinions. This was his wife’s cousin Waraka, a man of specu¬ 
lative mind and flexible faith; originally a Jew, subsequently 
a Christian, and withal a pretender to astrology. He is 
worthy of note as being the first on record to translate parts 
of the Old and New Testament into Arabic. From him 
Mahomet is supposed to have derived much of his information 
respecting those writings, and many of the traditions of the 
Mishnu and the Talmud, on which he draws so copiously in 
his Koran. 

The knowledge thus variously acquired and treasured up in 
an uncommonly retentive memory, was in direct hostility to 
the gross idolatry prevalent in Arabia, and practised at the 
Caaba. That sacred edifice had gradually become filled and 
surrounded by idols,' to the number of three hundred and 
sixty, being one for every day of the Arab year. Hither had 
been brought idols from various parts, the deities of other 
nations, the chief of which, Hobal, was from Syria, and sup¬ 
posed to have the power of giving rain. Among these idols, too, 
were Abraham and Ishmael, once revered as prophets and pro¬ 
genitors, now represented with divining arrows in their hands, 
symbols of magic. 

Mahomet became more and more sensible of the grossness 
and absurdity of this idolatry, in proportion as his intelligent 
mind contrasted it with the spiritual religions, which had 
been the subjects of his inquiries. Various passages in the 
Koran show the ruling idea which gradually sprang up in his 
mind, until it engrossed his thoughts and influenced all his 
actions. That idea was a religious reform. It had become his 
fixed belief, deduced from all that he had learned and medi¬ 
tated, that the only true religion had been revealed to Adam 
at his creation, and been promulgated and practised in the 


CONDUCT OF MAHOMET AFTER HIS MARRIAGE. 41 


days of innocence. That religion inculcated the direct and 
spiritual worship of one true and only God, the creator of the 
universe. 

It was his belief, furthermore, that this religion, so elevated 
and simple, had repeatedly been corrupted and debased by 
man, and especially outraged by idolatry; wherefore a suc¬ 
cession of prophets, each inspired by a revelation from the 
Most High, had been sent from time to time, and at distant 
periods, to restore it to its original purity. Such was Noah, 
such was Abraham, such was Moses, and such was Jesus Christ. 
By each of these the true religion had been reinstated upon 
earth, but had again been vitiated by their followers. The 
faith as taught and practised by Abraham when he came out 
of the land of Chaldea seems especially to have formed a re¬ 
ligious standard in his mind, from his veneration for the 
patriarch as the father of Ishmael, the progenitor of his race. 

It appeared to Mahomet that the time for another reform 
was again arrived. The world had once more lapsed into 
blind idolatry. It needed the advent of another prophet, 
authorized by a mandate from on high, to restore the erring 
children of men to the right path, and to bring back the 
worship of the Caaba to what it had been in the days of 
Abraham and the patriarchs. The probability cff such an 
advent, with its attendant reforms, seems to have taken pos¬ 
session of his mind, and produced habits of reverie and medi¬ 
tation, incompatible with the ordinary concerns of life and the 
bustle of the world. We are told that he gradually absented 
himself from society, and sought the solitude of a cavern on 
Mount Hara, about three leagues north of Mecca, where, in 
emulation of the Christian anchorites of the desert, he would 
remain days and nights together, engaged in prayer and medi¬ 
tation. In this way he always passed the month of Bamad- 
han, the holy month of the Arabs. Such intense occupation 
of the mind on one subject, accompanied by fervent enthu¬ 
siasm of spirit, could not but have a powerful effect upon his 
frame. He became subject to dreams, to ecstasies and trances. 
For six months successively, according to one of his histo¬ 
rians, he had constant dreams bearing on the subject of his 
waking thoughts. Often ho would lose all consciousness of 
surrounding objects, and lie upon the ground as if insensible. 
Cadijah, who was sometimes the faithful companion of his 
solitude, beheld these paroxysms with anxious solicitude, and 
entreated to know the cause; but he evaded her inquiries, or 


42 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


answered them mysteriously. Some of his adversaries have 
attributed them to epilepsy, but devout Moslems declare them 
to have been the workings of prophecy; for already, say they, 
the intimations of the Most High began to dawn, though 
vaguely, on his spirit; and his mind labored with conceptions 
too great for mortal thought. At length, say they, what had 
hitherto been shadowed out in dreams, was made apparent 
and distinct by an angelic apparition and a divine annun¬ 
ciation. 

It was in the fortieth year of his age when this famous 
revelation took place. Accounts are given of it by Moslem 
writers as if received from his own lips, and it is alluded to in 
certain passages of the Koran. He was passing, as was his 
wont, the month of Ramadhan in the cavern of Mount Kara, 
endeavoring by fasting, prayer, and solitary meditation, to 
elevate his thoughts to the contemplation of divine truth. It 
was on the night called by Arabs A1 Kader, or the Divine 
Decree; a night in which, according to the Koran, angels de¬ 
scend to earth, and Gabriel brings down the decrees of God. 
During that night there is peace on earth, and a holy quiet 
reigns over all nature until the rising of the morn. 

As Mahomet, in the silent watches of the night, lay wrapped 
in his mantle, he heard a voice calling upon him; uncovering 
his head, a flood of light broke upon him of such intolerable 
splendor that he swooned away. On regaining his senses, he 
beheld an angel in a human form, which, approaching from a 
distance, displayed a silken cloth covered with written charac¬ 
ters. “Read!” said the angel. 

“ I know not how to read!” replied Mahomet. 

“ Read!” repeated the angel, “ in the name of the Lord, who 
has created all things; who created man from a clot of blood. 
Read in the name of the Most High, who taught man the use 
of the pen; who sheds on his soul the ray of knowledge, and 
teaches him what before he knew not.” 

Upon this Mahomet instantly felt his understanding illum¬ 
ined with celestial light, and read what was written on the 
cloth, which contained the decrees of God, as afterward pro¬ 
mulgated in the Koran. When he had finished the perusal, 
the heavenly messenger announced, “Oh, Mahomet, of a 
verity, thou art the prophet of God! and I am his angel 
Gabriel!” 

Mahomet, we are told, came trembling and agitated to Cadi 
jah in the morning, not knowing whether what he had heard 


CONDUCT OF MAIIOMET AFTER HIS MARRIAGE. 43 

and seen was indeed true, and that he was a prophet decreed 
to effect that reform so long the object of his meditations; or 
whether it might not be a mere vision, a delusion of the 
senses, or, worse than all, the apparition of an evil spirit. 

Cadijah, however, saw everything with the eye of faith, and 
the credulity of an affectionate woman. She saw in it the 
fruition of her husband’s wishes, and the end of his paroxysms 
and privations. “Joyful tidings dost thou bring!” exclaimed 
she. “By him, in whose hand is the soul of Cadijah, I will 
henceforth regard thee as the prophet of our nation. Re¬ 
joice,” added she, seeing him still cast down; “Allah will not 
suffer thee to fall to shame. Hast thou not been loving to thy 
kinsfolk, kind to thy neighbors, charitable to the poor, hospi¬ 
table to the stranger, faithful to thy word, and ever a defender 
of the truth?” 

Cadijah hastened to communicate what she had heard to her 
cousin Waraka, the translator of the Scriptures; who, as we 
have shown, had been a household oracle of Mahomet in mat¬ 
ters of religion. He caught at once, and with eagerness, at 
this miraculous annunciation. “ By him in whose hand is the 
soul of Waraka,” exclaimed he; “ thou speakest true, oh Cadi¬ 
jah! The angel who has appeared to thy husband is the same 
who, in days of old, was sent to Moses, the son of Amram. 
His annunciation is true. Thy husband is indeed a prophet!” 

The zealous concurrence of the learned Waraka is said to 
have had a powerful effect in fortifying the dubious mind of 
Mahomet. 

Note.— Dr. Gustav Weil, in a note to Mohammed der Prophet , discusses the ques* 
tion of Mahomet’s being subject to attacks of epilepsy; which has generally been 
represented as a slander of his enemies and of Christian writers. It appears, how¬ 
ever, to have been asserted by some of the oldest Moslem biographers, and given 
on the authority of persons about him. He would be seized, they said, with violent 
trembling followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion, during which perspira¬ 
tion would stream from his forehead in the coldest weather; he would lie with his 
eyes closed, foaming at the mouth, and bellowing like a young camel. Ayesha, one 
of his wives, and Zeid, one of his disciples, are among the persons cited as testify¬ 
ing to that effect. They considered him at such times as under the influence of a 
revelation. He had such attacks, however, in Mecca, before the Koran was re¬ 
vealed to him. Cadijah feared that he was possessed by evil spirits, and would 
have called in the aid of a conjuror to exorcise them, but he forbade her. He did 
not like that any one should see him during these paroxysms. His visions, how¬ 
ever, were not always preceded by such attacks. Hareth Ibn Haschem, it is said t 
once asked him in what manner the revelations were made. “ Often,” replied he, 
“ the angel appears to me in a human form, and speaks to me. Sometimes I hear 
sounds like the tinkling of a bell, but see nothing. [A ringing in the ears is a 
symptom of epilepsy.] When the invisible angel has departed, I am possessed oi 
what he has revealed.” Some of his revelations he professed to receive direct 


44 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


from God, others in dreams; for the dreams of prophets, he used to say, ar8 
revelations. 

The reader will find this note of service in throwing some degree of light upon 
the enigmatical career of this extraordinary man. 


CHAPTER VII. 

MAHOMET INCULCATES HIS DOCTRINES SECRETLY AND SLOWLY— 
RECEIVES FURTHER REVELATIONS AND COMMANDS—ANNOUNCES 
IT TO HIS KINDRED—MANNER IN WHICH IT WAS RECEIVED- 
ENTHUSIASTIC DEVOTION OF ALI—CHRISTIAN PORTENTS. 

For a time Mahomet confided his revelations merely to his 
own household. One of the first to avow himself a believer 
was his servant Zeid, an Arab of the tribe of Kalb. This youth 
had been captured in childhood by a free booting party of 
Koreishites, and had come by purchase or lot into the posses¬ 
sion of Mahomet. Several years afterward his father, hearing 
of his being in Mecca, repaired thither, and offered a consider¬ 
able sum for his ransom. “If he chooses to go with thee,” 
said Mahomet, ‘ ‘ he shall go without ransom; but if he chooses 
to remain with me, why should I not keep him?” Zeid pre¬ 
ferred to remain, having ever, he said, been treated more as a 
son than as a slave. Upon this, Mahomet publicly adopted 
him, and he had ever since remained with him in affectionate 
servitude. Now, on embracing the new faith, he was set 
entirely free, but it will be found that he continued through 
life that devoted attachment wdiich Mahomet seems to have 
had the gift of inspiring in his followers and dependents. 

The early steps of Mahomet in his prophetic career were 
perilous and doubtful, and taken in secrecy. He had hostility 
to apprehend on every side; from his immediate kindred, the 
Koreishites of the line of Haschem, whose power and pros¬ 
perity were identified with idolatry; and still more from the 
rival line of Abd Schems, who had long looked with envy and 
jealousy on the Haschemites, and would eagerly raise the cry 
of heresy and impiety to dispossess them of the guardianship 
of the Caaba. At the head of this rival branch of Koreish was 
Abu Sofian, the son of Harb, grandson of Omeya, and great- 
grandson of Abd Schems. He was an able and ambitious 



DOCTRINES OF MAHOMET . 45 

man, of great wealth and influence, and will be found one of 
the most persevering and powerful opponents of Mahomet.* 

Under these adverse circumstances the new faith was propa¬ 
gated secretly and slowly, insomuch that for the first three 
years the number of converts did not exceed forty; these, too, 
for the most part, were young persons, strangers, and slaves. 
Their meetings for prayer were held in private, either at the 
house of one of the initiated, or in a cave near Mecca. Their 
secrecy, however, did not protect them from outrage. Their 
meetings were discovered; a rabble broke into their cavern, 
and a scuffle ensued. One of the assailants was wounded in 
the head by Saad, an armorer, thenceforth renowned among 
the faithful as the first of their number who shed blood in the 
cause of Islam. 

One of the bitterest opponents of Mahomet was his uncle, 
Abu Lahab, a wealthy man, of proud spirit and irritable tem¬ 
per. His son Otha had married Mahomet’s third daughter, 
Rokaia, so that they were doubly allied. Abu Lahab, how¬ 
ever, was also allied to the rival line of Koreish, having mar¬ 
ried Omm Jemil, sister of Abu Sofian, and he was greatly 
under the control of his wife and his brother-in-law. He rep¬ 
robated what he termed the heresies of his nephew, as calcu¬ 
lated to bring disgrace upon their immediate line, and to draw 
upon it the hostilities of the rest of the tribe of Koreish. Ma¬ 
homet was keenly sensible of the rancorous opposition of this 
uncle, which he attributed to the instigations of his wife, Omm 
Jemil. He especially deplored it, as he saw that it affected the 
happiness of his daughter Rokaia, whose inclination to his doc¬ 
trines brought on her the reproaches of her husband and his 
family. 

These and other causes of solicitude preyed upon his spirits, 
and increased the perturbation of his mind. He became worn 
and haggard, and subject more and more to fits of abstraction. 
Those of his relatives who were attached to him noticed his 
altered mien, and dreaded an attack of illness; others scoff- 
ingly accused him of mental hallucination; and the foremost 


* Niebuhr (Travels, vol. ii.) speaks of the tribe of Harb, which possessed several 
cities, and a number of villages in the highlands of Hedjas, a mountainous range 
between Mecca and Medina. They have castles on precipitous rocks, and harass 
and lay under contribution the caravans. It is presumed that this tribe takes its 
name from the father of Abu Sofian, as did the great line of the Omeyades from 

bi s crrnndffttheF. 



46 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


among these scoffers was her uncle’s wife, Omm Jemil, the 
sister of Abu Sofian. 

The result of this disordered state of mind and body was an 
other vision, or revelation, commanding him to “ arise, preach, 
and magnify the Lord. ” He was now to announce, publicly 
and boldly, his doctrines, beginning with his kindred and 
tribe. Accordingly, in the fourth year of what is called his 
mission, he summoned all the Koreishites of the line of 
Haschem to meet him on the hill of Safa, in the vicinity of 
Mecca, when he would unfold matters important to their wel¬ 
fare. They assembled there, accordingly, and among them 
came Mahomet’s hostile uncle, Abu Lahab, and with him his 
scoffing wife, Omm Jemil. Scarce had the prophet begun to 
discourse of his mission, and to impart his revelations, when 
Abu Lahab started up in a rage, reviled him for calling them 
together on so idle an errand, and catching up a stone, would 
have hurled it at him. Mahomet turned upon him a wither¬ 
ing look, cursed the hand thus raised in menace, and predicted 
his doom to the fire of Jehennam; with the assurance that his 
wife, Omm Jemil, would bear the bundle of thorns with which 
the fire would be kindled. 

The assembly broke up in confusion. Abu Lahab and his 
wife, exasperated at the curse dealt out to them, compelled 
their son, Otha, to repudiate his wife, Eokaia, and sent her 
back weeping to Mahomet. She was soon indemnified, how¬ 
ever, by having a husband of the true faith, being eagerly 
taken to wife by Mahomet’s zealous disciple, Othman Ibn 
Affan. 

Nothing discouraged by the failure of his first attempt, 
Mahomet called a second meeting of the Hascliemites at- his 
own house, where, having regaled them with the flesh of a 
lamb, and given them milk to drink, he stood forth and an¬ 
nounced, at full length, his revelations received from heaven, 
and the divine command to impart them to those of his im¬ 
mediate line. ‘ ‘ Oh, children of Abd al Motalleb, ” cried he, with 
enthusiasm, “to you, cf all men, has Allah vouchsafed these 
most precious gifts. In his name I offer you the blessings of 
this world, and endless joys hereafter. Who among you will 
share the burden of my offer? Who will be my brother: my 
lieutenant, my vizier?” 

All remained silent; some wondering, others smiling with 
incredulity and derision. At length Ali, starting up with 
youthful zeal, offered himself to the service of the prophet, 


DOCTIUjS'ES OE MAHOMET. 


47 


though modestly, acknowledging his youth and physical weak* 
ness.* Mahomet threw his arms round the generous youth, 
and pressed him to his bosom. “Behold my brother, my 
vizier, my vicegerent,” exclaimed lie; “let all listen to his 
words, and obey him. ” 

The outbreak of such a stripling as Ali, however, was an¬ 
swered by a scornful burst of laughter of the Koreishites, who 
taunted Abu Taleb, the father of the youthful proselyte, with 
having to bow down before his son, and yield him obedience. 

But though the doctrines of Mahomet were thus ungra¬ 
ciously received by his kindred and friends, they found favor 
among the people at large, especially among the women, who 
are ever prone to befriend a persecuted cause. Many of the 
Jews, also, followed him for a time, but when they found that 
he permitted his disciples to eat the flesh of the camel, and of 
other animals forbidden by their law, they drew back and re¬ 
jected his religion as unclean. 

Mahomet now threw off all reserve, or rather was inspired 
with increasing enthusiasm, and went about openly and 
earnestly proclaiming his doctrines, and giving, himself out at? 
a prophet, sent by God to put an end to idolatry, and to miti¬ 
gate the rigor of the Jewish and the Christian law. The hills 
of Safa and Kubeis, sanctified by traditions concerning Hagar 
and Ishmael, were his favorite places of preaching, and Mount 
Hara was his Sinai, whither he retired occasionally, in fits of 
excitement and enthusiasm, to return from its solitary cave 
with fresh revelations of the Koran. 

The good old Christian writers, on treating of the advent of 
one whom they denounce as the Arab enemy of the church, 
make superstitious record of divers prodigies which occurred 
about this time, awful forerunners of the troubles about to 
agitate the world. In Constantinople, at that time the seat of 
Christian empire, were several monstrous births and prodigi¬ 
ous apparitions, which struck dismay into the hearts of all 
beholders. In certain religious processions in that neighbor¬ 
hood, the crosses on a sudden moved of themselves, and were 
violently agitated, causing astonishment and terror. The Nile, 
too, that ancient mother of wonders, gave birth to two hideous 
forms, seemingly man and woman, which rose out of its 


* By an error of translators, Ali is made to accompany his offer of adhesion by 
an extravagant threat against all who should oppose Mahomet. 



48 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


waters, gazed about them for a time with terrific aspect, and 
sank again beneath the waves. For a whole day the sun ap¬ 
peared to be diminished to one third of its usual size, shedding 
pale and baleful rays. During a moonless night a furnace 
light glowed throughout the heavens, and bloody lances glit¬ 
tered in the sky. 

All these, and sundry other like marvels were interpreted 
into signs of coming troubles. The ancient servants of God 
shook their heads mournfully, predicting the reign of anti¬ 
christ at hand; with vehement persecution of the Christian 
faith, and great desolation of the churches; and to such holy 
men who have passed through the trials and troubles of the 
faith, adds the venerable Padre Jay me Bleda, it is given to 
understand and explain these mysterious portents, which fore¬ 
run disasters of the church; even as it is given to ancient 
mariners to read in the signs of the air, the heavens, and the 
deep, the coming tempest which is to overwhelm their bark. 

Many of these sainted men were gathered to glory before the 
completion of their prophecies. There, seated securely in the 
empyreal heavens, they may have looked down with compas¬ 
sion upon the troubles of the Christian world; as men on the 
serene heights of mountains look down upon the tempests 
which sweep the earth and sea, wrecking tall ships, and rend¬ 
ing lofty towers. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

OUTLINES OF THE MAHOMETAN FAITH. 

Though it is not intended in this place to go fully into the 
doctrines promulgated by Mahomet, yet it is important to the 
right appreciation of his character and conduct, and of the 
events and circumstances set forth in the following narrative, 
to give theii main features. 

It must be particularly borne in mind that Mahomet did not 
profess to set up a new religion; but to restore that derived, in 
the earliest times, from God himself. “ We follow,” says the 
Koran, ‘‘the religion of Abraham the orthodox, who was no 
idolater. We believe in God and that which hath been sent 
down to us, and that which hath been sent down unto Abra- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


49 


ham and Ishmael, and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that 
which was delivered unto Moses and Jesus, and that which 
was delivered unto the prophets from the Lord; we make 
no distinction between any of them, and to God we are re¬ 
signed.”* * * § 

The Koran,f which was the great book of his faith, was 
delivered in portions from time to time, according to the ex¬ 
citement of his feelings or the exigency of circumstances. It 
was not given as his own work, but as a divine revelation; as 
the very words of God. The Deity is supposed to speak in 
every instance. “We have sent thee down the book of truth, 
confirming the scripture which Avas revealed before it, and 
preserving the same in its purity.” J 

The law of Moses, it was said, had for a time been the guide 
and rule of human conduct. At the coming of Jesus Christ it 
Avas superseded by the Gospel; both were now to give place 
to the Koran, Avhich was more full and explicit than the pre¬ 
ceding codes, and intended to reform the abuses which had 
crept into them through the negligence or the corruptions of 
their professors. It Avas the completion of the laAv; after it 
there would be no more divine revelations. Mahomet Avas the 
last, as he was the greatest, of the line of prophets sent to 
make known the will of God. 

The unity of God Avas the corner-stone of this reformed re¬ 
ligion. ‘ ‘ There is no God but God, ” was its leading dogma. 
Hence it received the name of the religion of Islam, § an Ara¬ 
bian Avord, implying submission to God. To this leading 
dogma was added, “Mahomet is the prophet of God;” an ad¬ 
dition authorized, as it was maintained, by the divine annun- 


* Koran, chap. ii. 

t Derived from the Arabic word Kora, to read or teach. 

X Koran, ch. v. 

§ Some etymologists derive Islam from Salem or Aslama, which signifies salva¬ 
tion. The Christians form from it the term Islamism, and the Jews have varied it 
into Ismailism, which they intend as a reproach, and an allusion to the origin of the 
Arabs as descendants of Ishmael. 

From Islam the Arabians drew the terms Moslem or Muslem, and Musulman, a 
professor of the faith of Islam. These terms are in the singular number and make 
Musliman in the dual, and Muslimen in the plural. The French and some other 
nations follow the idioms of their own languages in adopting or translating the' 
Arabic terms, and form the plural by the addition of the letter s; writing Musul¬ 
man and Musulmans. A few English writers, of whom Gibbon is t^e chief, have 
imitated them, imagining that they were following the Arabian usage. Most Eng¬ 
lish authors, however, follow the idiom of their own language, -writing Moslem and 
Moslems, Musulman and Musulmen; this usage i3 also the more harmonious. 



50 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

ciation, and important to procure a ready acceptation of his 
revelations. 

Besides the unity of God, a belief was inculcated in his 
angels or ministering spirits; in his prophets; in the resur¬ 
rection of the body; in the last judgment and a future state of 
rewards and punishments, and in predestination. Much of 
the Koran may be traced to the Bible, the Mishnu, and the 
Talmud of the Jews/' 1 especially its wild though often beauti¬ 
ful traditions concerning the angels, the prophets, the patri¬ 
archs, and the good and evil genii. He had at an early age 
imbibed a reverence for the Jewish faith, his mother, it is sug¬ 
gested, having been of that religion. 

The system laid down in the Koran, however, was essen¬ 
tially founded on the Christian doctrines inculcated in the 
New Testament; as they had been expounded to him by the 
Christian sectarians of Arabia. Our Saviour was to be held 
in the highest reverence as an inspired prophet, the greatest 
that had been sent before the time of Mahomet, to reform the 
law; but all idea of his divinity was rejected as impious, and 
the doctrine of the Trinity was denounced as an outrage on the 
unity of God. Both were pronounced errors and interpola¬ 
tions of the expounders; and this, it will be observed, was the 
opinion of some of the Arabian sects of Christians. 

The worship of saints and the introduction of images and 
paintings representing them, were condemned as idolatrous 
lapses from the pure faith of Christ, and such, we have already 
observed, were the tenets of the Nestorians, with whom Maho¬ 
met is known to have had much communication. 

All pictures representing living things were prohibited. Ma¬ 
homet used to say that the angels would not enter a house in 
which there were such pictures, and that those who made them 
would be sentenced, in the next world, to find souls for them, 
or be punished. 

Most of the benignant precepts of our Saviour were incorpo¬ 
rated in the Koran. Frequent almsgiving was enjoined as an 


* 77ie Mishnu of the Jews, like the Sonna of the Mahometans, is a collection of 
traditions forming the Oral law. It was compiled in the second century by Judah 
Hakkodish, a learned Jewish Rabbi, during the reign of Antoninus Pius, the Roman 
Emperor. 

The Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonish Talmud are both commentaries on 
the Mishnu. The former was compiled at Jerusalem, about three hundred years 
after Christ, and the latter in Babylonia, about two centuries later. The Mishnu is 
the most ancient record possessed by the Jews except the Bible. 



MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


51 


imperative duty, and the immutable law of right and wrong, , 

Do unto another as thou wouldst he should do unto thee,” 
was given for the moral conduct of the faithful. 

“Deal not unjustly with others,” says the Koran, “ and ye 
shall not be dealt with unjustly. If there he any debtor under 
a difficulty of paying his debt, let his creditor wait until it be 
easy for him to do it; but if he remit it in alms, it will be better 
for him. ” 

Mahomet inculcated a noble fairness and sincerity in dealing. 

“ Oh merchants!” would he say, “ falsehood and deception are 
apt to prevail in traffic, purify it therefor® with alms; give 
something in charity as an atonement; for God is incensed by 
dece~in dealing, but charity appeases his anger. He who sells 
a defective thing, concealing its defect, will provoke the anger 
of God and the curses of the angels. 

“Take not advantage of the necessities of another to buy 
things at a sacrifice: rather relieve his indigence. 

“ Feed the hungry, visit the sick, and free the captive if con¬ 
fined unjustly. 

“Look not scornfully upon thy fellow man; neither walk the 
earth with insolence; for God loveth not the arrogant and vain¬ 
glorious. Be moderate in thy pace, and speak with a moder¬ 
ate tone; for the most ungrateful of all voices is the voice of 
asses.”* 

Idolatry of all kinds was strictly forbidden; indeed it was 
what Mahomet held in most abhorrence. Many of the religious 
usages, however, prevalent since time immemorial among the 
Arabs, to which he had been accustomed from infancy, and 


* The following words of Mahomet, treasured up by one of his disciples, appear to 
have been suggested by a passage in Matthew 25 : 35-45: 

“Verily, God will say at the day of resurrection, ‘ Oh sons of Adam: I was sick, 
and ye did not visit me ’ Then they will say. ‘How could we visit tlice? for thou 
Art the Lord of the universe, and art free from sickness. 1 And God will reply, 
‘ Knew ye not that such a one of my servants was sick, and ye did not visit him ? Had 
you visited that servant, it would have been counted to you as righteousness.’ And 
God will say, ‘ Oh sons of Adam 1 I asked you for food, and ye gave it me not.’ And 
the sons of Adam will say, ‘How could we give thee food, seeing thou art the sus- 
tainer of the universe, and art free from hunger? ’ And God will say, ‘Such a one 
of my servants ask«d you for bread, and ye refused it. Had you given him to eat. 
ye would have received your reward from me.’ And God will say. ‘Oh sons of 
Adam! I asked you for water, and ye gave it me not.’ They will reply, ‘Oh, our 
supporter! How could we give thee water, seeing thou art the sustainer of the 
universe, and not subject to thirst? ’ And God will say, ‘ Such a one of my servants 
asked you for water, and ye did not give it to him. Had ye done so, ye would have 
received your reward frem me.’ " 



52 


MAHOMET AND IMS SUCCESSORS. 


which were not incompatible with the doctrine of the unity of 
God, were still retained. Such was the pilgrimage to Mecca, 
including all the rights connected with the Caaba, the well of 
Zem Zem, and other sacred places in the vicinity; apart from 
any worship of the idols by which they had been profaned. 

The old Arabian rite of prayer, accompanied or rather pre¬ 
ceded by ablution, was still continued. Prayers indeed were 
enjoined at certain hours of the day and night; they were sim¬ 
ple in form and phrase, addressed directly to the Deity with 
certain inflections, or at times a total prostration of the body, 
and with the face turned toward the Kebla, or point of adora 
tion. 

At the end of each prayer the following verse from the second 
chapter of the Koran was recited. It is said to have great 
beauty in the original Arabic, and is engraved on gold and sil¬ 
ver ornaments, and on precious stones worn as amulets. “God! 
There is no God but He, the living, the ever living; he sleepetli 
not, neither doth he slumber. To him belongeth the. heavens, 
and the earth, and all that they contain. Who shall intercede 
with him unless by his permission? He knoweth the past and 
the future, but no one can comprehend anything of his knowl¬ 
edge but that which he revealeth. His sway extendeth over 
the heavens and the earth, and to sustain them both is no bur¬ 
den to him. He is the High, the Mighty!” 

Mahomet was strenuous in enforcing the importance and 
efficacy of prayer. “Angels,” said he, “ come among you both 
by night and day; after which those of the night ascend to 
heaven, and God asks them how they left his creatures. We 
found them, say they, at their prayers, and we left them at 
their prayers. ” 

The doctrines in the Koran respecting the resurrection and 
final judgment, were in some respects similar to those of 
the Christian religion, but were mixed up with wild notions 
derived from other sources; while the joys of the Moslem 
heaven, though partly spiritual, were clogged and debased by 
the sensualities of earth, and infinitely below the ineffable 
purity and spiritual blessedness of the heaven promised by our 
Saviour. 

Nevertheless, the description of the last day, as contained in 
the eighty-first chapter of the Koran, and which must have 
been given by Mahomet at the outset of his mission at Mecca, 
as one of the first of his revelations, partakes of sublimity. 

“In the name of the all merciful God! a day shall come when 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 53 


tlie sun will be shrouded, and the stars will fall from the 
heavens; 

“When the camels about to foal will be neglected, and wild 
beasts will herd together through fear. 

“ When the waves of the ocean will boil, and the souls of the 
dead again be united to the bodies. 

“ When the female infant that has been buried alive will de- 
mand, for what crime was I sacrificed? and the eternal books 
will be laid open. 

“When the heavens will pass away like a scroll, and hell will 
burn fiercely; and the joys of paradise will be made manifest. 

“ On that day shall every soul make known that which it 
hath performed. 

“Verily, I swear to you by the stars which move swiftly 
and are lost in the brightness of the sun, and by the darkness 
of the night, and by the dawning of the day, these are not the 
words of an evil spirit, but of an angel of dignity and power, 
who possesses the confidence of Allah, and is revered by the 
angels under his command. Neither is your companion, Ma¬ 
homet, distracted. He beheld the celestial messenger in the 
light of the clear horizon, and the words revealed to him are 
intended as an admonition unto all creatures.” 


Note —To exhibit the perplexed maze of controversial doctrines from which 
Mahomet had to acquire his notions of the Christian faith, we subjoin the leading 
points of the jarring sects of oriental Christians alluded to in the foregoing article; 
all of which have been pronounced heretical or schismatic. 

The Sabellians so called from Sabellius, a Libyan priest of the third century, 
believed in the lenity of God. and that the Trinity expressed but three different 
states or relations. Father. Son, and Holy Ghost, all forming but one substance, as 

a man consists of body and soul. . 

The Arians from Arius, an ecclesiastic of Alexandria in the fourth century, 
affirmed Christ to be the Son of God, but distinct from him and inferior to him, 


and den ; ed the Holy Ghost to be God. 

The Nestorians from Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople in the fifth century, 
maintained that Christ had two distinct natures, divine and human; that Mary was 
only his mother, and Jesus a man, and that it was an abomination to style her, as 

was the custom of the church, the Mother of God 

The Monophvsites maintained the single nature of Christ, as their name betokens. 
They affirmed that he was combined of God and man, so mingled and united as to 


form but one nature. , , . ,, 

The Eutvehians from Eutycbes, abbot of a convent in Constantinople in the fifth 
century were a branch of the Monophysites, expressly opposed to the Nestorians. 
They denied the double nature of Christ, declaring that he was entirely God previ¬ 
ous to the incarnation, and entirely man during the incarnation. 

The Jacobites from Jacobus, bishop of Edessa, in Syria, in the sixth century, 
were a very numerous branch of the Monophysites, varying but little from the 
Eutvehians Most of the Christian tribes of Arabs were Jacobites. 

The Manamites, or worshippers of Mary, regarded the Trinity as consisting o t 
Hod the Father, God the Son, and God the Virgin Mary. 


54 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


The Collyridians were a sect of Arabian Christians, composed chiefly of females. 
They worshipped the Virgin Mary as possessed of divinity, and made offerings to 
her of a twisted cake, called collyris, whence they derived their name. 

The Nazarseans, or Nazarenes, were a sect of Jewish Christ ian:-, who considered 
Christ as the Messiah, as born of a Virgin by the Holy Ghost, and as possessing 
something of a divine nature; but they conformed in all other respects to the rites 
and ceremonies of the Mosaic law. 

The Ebionites, from Ebion, a converted Jew who lived in the first century, were 
also a sect of judaizing Christians, little differing from the Nazarmans. They be¬ 
lieved Christ to be a pure man, the greatest of the prophets, but denied that he had 
any existence previous to being born of the Virgin Mary. This sect, as well as that 
of the Nazareeans, had many adherents in Arabia. 

Many other sects might be enumerated, such as the Corinthians, Maronites, and 
Marcionites, who took their names from learned and zealous leaders; and the Do- 
cetes and Gnostics, w-ho were subdivided into various sects of subtle enthusiasts. 
Some of these asserted the immaculate purity of the Virgin Mary, affirming that 
her conception and delivery were effected like the transmission of the rays of light 
through a pane of glass, without impairing her virginity; an opinion still main¬ 
tained strenuously in substance by Spanish Catholics. 

Most of the Docetes asserted that Jesus Christ was of a nature entirely divine; 
that a phantom, a mere form without substance, was crucified by the deluded Jews, 
and that the crucifixion and resurrection were deceptive mystical exhibitions at 
Jerusalem for the benefit of the human race. 

The Carpocratians, Basilidians, and Valentinians, named after three Egyptian 
controversialists, contended that Jesus Christ was merely a wise and virtuous 
mortal, the son of Joseph and Mary, selected by God to reform and instruct man¬ 
kind; but that a divine nature was imparted to him at the maturity of his age. and 
period of his baptism, by St. John. The former part of this creed, which is that of 
the Ebionites, has been revived, and is professed by some of the Unitarian Chris¬ 
tians, a numerous and increasing sect of Protestants of the present day. 

It is sufficient to glance at these dissensions, which w r e have not arranged in 
chronological order, but which convulsed the early Christian church, and continued 
to prevail at the era of Mahomet, to acquit him of any charge of conscious 
blasphemy in the opinions he inculcated concerning the nature and mission of our 
Saviour. 


CHAPTER IX. 

RIDICULE CAST ON MAHOMET AND IIIS DOCTRINES—DEMAND FOR 
MIRACLES—CONDUCT OF ABU TALEB—VIOLENCE OF THE KORE- 
ISIIITES—MAHOMET’S DAUGHTER ROKAIA, WITH HER UNCLE 
OTHMAN, AND A NUMBER OF DISCIPLES TAKE REFUG® IN ABYS' 
SINIA—MAHOMET IN THE HOUSE OF ORKHAM—HOSTILITY OF 
ABU JAIIL; HIS PUNISHMENT. 

The greatest difficulty with which Mahomet had to contend 
at the outset of his prophetic career was the ridicule of his 
opponents. Those who had known him from his infancy— 
who had seen him a boy about the streets of Mecca, and after- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 




ward occupied in all the ordinary concerns of life, scoffed at 
his assumption of the apostolic character. They pointed 
with a sneer at him as he passed, exclaiming, “Behold the 
grandson of Abd al Motalleb, who pretends to know what is 
going on in heaven!” Some who had witnessed his fits of 
mental excitement and ecstasy considered him insane; others, 
declared that he was possessed with a devil, and some charged 
him with sorcery and magic. 

When he walked the streets he was subject to those jeers 
and taunts and insults which the vulgar are apt to vent upon 
men of eccentric conduct and unsettled mind. If he attempted 
to preach, his voice was drowned by discordant noises and 
ribald songs; nay, dirt was thrown upon him when he was 
praying in the Caaba. 

Nor was itrthe vulgar and ignorant alone who thus insulted 
him. One of his most redoubtable assailants was a youth 
named Amru; and as he subsequently made a distinguished 
figure in Mahometan history, we would impress the circum¬ 
stances of this, his first appearance, upon the mind of the 
reader. He was the son of a courtesan of Mecca, who seems to 
have rivalled in fascination the Phrynes and Aspasias of 
Greece, and to have numbered some of the noblest of the land 
among her lovers. ‘When she gave birth to this child, she 
mentioned several of the tribe of Koreish who had equal claims 
to the paternity. The infant was declared to have most 
resemblance to Aass, the oldest of her admirers, whence, in 
addition to his name of Amru, he received the designation of 
Ibn al Aass, the son of Aass. 

Nature had lavished her choicest gifts upon this natural 
child, as if to atone for the blemish of his birth. Though 
young, he was already one of the most popular poets of Ara¬ 
bia, and equally distinguished for the pungency of his satirical 
effusions and the captivating sweetness of his serious lays. 

When Mahomet first announced his mission, this youth as¬ 
sailed him with lampoons and humorous madrigals; which, 
falling in with the poetic taste of the Arabs, were widely circu¬ 
lated, and proved greater impediments to the growth of Is- 
lamism than the bitterest persecution. 

Those who were more serious in their opposition demanded 
of Mahomet supernatural proofs of what he asserted. “Moses 
and Jesus, and the rest of the prophets,” said they, “wrought 
miracles to prove the divinity of their missions. If thou art 
indeed a prophet, greater than they, work the like miracles.” 


56 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


The reply of Mahomet may be gathered from his own words 
in the Koran. ‘ ‘ What greater miracle could they have than 
the Koran itself: a book revealed by means of an unlettered 
man; so elevated in language, so incontrovertible in argument, 
that the united skill of men and devils could compose nothing 
comparable. What greater proof could there be that it came 
from none but God himself? The Koran itself is a miracle.” 

They demanded, however, more palpable evidence; miracles 
addressed to the senses; that he should cause the dumb to 
speak, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the dead to rise; or 
that he should work changes in the face of nature: cause foun¬ 
tains to gush forth; change a sterile place into a garden, with 
palm-trees and vines and running streams; cause a palace of 
gold to rise, decked with jewels and precious stones; or ascend 
by a ladder into heaven in their presence. Or, if the Koran 
did indeed, as he affirmed, come down from heaven, that they 
might see it as it descended, or behold the angels who brought 
it; and then they would believe. 

Mahomet replied sometimes by arguments, sometimes by de¬ 
nunciations. He claimed to be nothing more than a man sent 
by God as an apostle. Had angels, said he, walked familiarly 
on earth, an angel had assuredly been sent on this mission; but 
woeful had been the case of those who, *as in the present in¬ 
stance, doubted his word. They would not have- been able, as 
with me, to argue, and dispute, and take time to be convinced; 
their perdition would have been instantaneous. ‘ ‘ God, ” added 
he, “ needs no angel to enforce my mission. He is a sufficient 
witness between you and me. Those whom he shall dispose to 
be convinced will truly believe; those whom he shall permit to 
remain in error will find none to help their unbelief. On the 
day of resurrection they will appear blind, and deaf, and dumb, 
and grovelling on their faces. Their abode will be in the eter¬ 
nal flames of Jehennam. Such will be the reward of their un¬ 
belief. 

“You insist on miracles. God gave to Moses the power of 
working miracles. What was the consequence? Pharaoh dis¬ 
regarded his miracles, accused him of sorcery, and sought to 
drive him and his people from the land; but Pharaoh was 
drowned, and with him all his host. Would ye tempt God to 
miracles, and risk the punishment of Pharaoh?” 

It is recorded by A1 Maalem, an Arabian writer, that some of 
Mahomet’s disciples at one tune joined with the multitude in 
this cry for miracles, and besought him to prove, at once, the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


57 


divinity of his mission, by turning the hill of Safa into gold. 
Being thus closely urged ho betook himself to prayer; and 
having finished, assured his followers that the angel Gabriel 
had appeared to him, and informed him that, should God 
grant his prayer, and work the desired miracle, all who dis¬ 
believed it would be exterminated. In pity to the multitude, 
therefore, who appeared to be a stiff-necked generation, he 
would not expose them to destruction: so the hill of Safa was 
permitted to remain in its pristine state. 

Other Moslem writers assert that Mahomet departed from 
his self-prescribed rule, and wrought occasional miracles, when 
he found his hearers unusually slow of belief. Thus we are 
told that, at one time, in presence of a multitude, he called to 
him a bull, and took from his horns a scroll containing a chap¬ 
ter of the Koran, just sent down from heaven. At another 
time, while discoursing in public, a white dove hovered over 
him, and, alighting on his shoulder, appeared to whisper in his 
ear; being, as he said, a messenger from the Deity. On an¬ 
other occasion he ordered the earth before him to be opened, 
when two jars were found, one filled with honey, the other 
with milk, which he pronounced emblems of the abundance 
promised by heaven to all who should obey his law. 

Christian writers have scoffed at these miracles; suggesting 
that the dove had been tutored to its task, and sought grains 
of wheat which it had been accustomed to find in the ear of 
Mahomet; that the scroll had previously been tied to the horns 
of the bull, and the vessels of milk and honey deposited in the 
ground. The truer course would be to discard these miracu¬ 
lous stories altogether, as fables devised by mistaken zealots; 
and such they have been pronounced by the ablest of the Mos¬ 
lem commentators. 

There is no proof that Mahomet descended to any artifices of 
the kind to enforce his doctrines or establish his apostolic 
claims. He appears to have relied entirely on reason and elo¬ 
quence, and to have been supported by religious enthusiasm in 
this early and dubious stage of his career. His earnest attacks 
upon the idolatry which had vitiated and superseded the primi¬ 
tive worship of the Caaba, began to have a sensible effect, and 
alarmed the Koreishites. They urged Abu Taleb to silence his 
nephew or to send him away; but finding their entreaties un¬ 
availing, they informed the old man that if this pretended 
prophet and his followers persisted in their heresies, they 
Should pay for them with their lives. 


58 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Abu Taleb hastened to inform Mahomet of these menaces, 
imploring him not to provoke against himself and family such 
numerous and powerful foes. 

The enthusiastic spirit of Mahomet kindled at the words. 
“ Oh my uncle!” exclaimed he, “though they should array the 
sun against me on my right hand, and the moon on my left, 
yet, until God should command me, or should take me hence, 
would I not depart from my purpose.” 

He was retiring with dejected countenance, when Abu Taleb 
called him back. The old man was as yet unconverted, but 
he was struck with admiration of the undaunted firmness 
of his nephew, and declared that, preach what he might, he 
would never abandon him to his enemies. Feeling that of him¬ 
self he could not yield sufficient protection, he called upon the 
other descendants of Hascliem and Abd al Motalleb to aid in 
shielding their kinsman from the persecution of the rest of the 
tribe of Koreish; and so strong is the family tie among the 
Arabs, that though it was protecting him in what they con¬ 
sidered a dangerous heresy, they all consented excepting his 
uncle, Abu Lahab. 

The animosity of the Koreishites became more and more 
virulent, and proceeded to personal violence. Mahomet was 
assailed and nearly strangled in the Caaba, and was rescued 
with difficulty by Abu Beker, who himself suffered personal 
injury in the affray. His immediate family became objects of 
hatred, especially liis daughter Rokaia and her husband, Oth- 
man Ibn Affan. Such of his disciples as had no powerful 
friends to protect them were in peril of their lives. Full of 
anxiety for their safety, Mahomet advised them to leave his 
dangerous companionship for the present, and take refuge in 
Abyssinia. The narrowness of the Red Sea made it easy to 
reach the African shore. The Abyssinians were Nestorian 
Christians, elevated by their religion above their barbarous 
neighbors. Their najashee or king was reputed to be tolerant 
and just. With him Mahomet trusted his daughter and his 
fugitive disciples would find refuge. 

Otlnnan Ibn Affan was the leader of this little band of Mos¬ 
lems, consisting of eleven men and four women. They took 
the way by the sea-coast to Jodda, a port about two days’ jour¬ 
ney to the east of Mecca, where they found two Abyssinian 
vessels at anchor, in which they embarked, and sailed for the 
land of refuge. 

This event, which happened in the fifth year of the mission 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


59 


of Mahomet, is called the first Hegira or Flight, to distinguish 
it from the second Hegira, the flight of the prophet himself 
from Mecca to Medina. The kind treatment experienced by 
the fugitives induced others of the same faith to follow their 
example, until the number of Moslem refugees in Abyssinia 
amounted to eighty-three men and eighteen women, besides 
children. 

The Koreishites finding that Mahomet was not to be silenced, 
and was daily making converts, passed a law banishing all who 
should embrace his faith. Mahomet retired before the storm, 
and took refuge in the house of a disciple named Orkham, 
situated on the hill of Safa. This hill, as has already been 
mentioned, was renowned in Arabian tradition as the one on 
which Adam and Eve were permitted to come once more to¬ 
gether, after the long solitary wandering about the earth 
which followed their expulsion from paradise. It was likewise 
connected in tradition with the fortunes of Hagar and Ishmael. 

Mahomet remained for a month in the house of Orkham, 
continuing his revelations and drawing to him sectaries from 
various parts of Arabia. The hostility of the Koreishites fol¬ 
lowed him to his retreat. Abu Jahl, an Arab of that tribe, 
sought him out, insulted him with opprobrious language, and 
even personally maltreated him. The outrage was reported 
to Hamza, an uncle of Mahomet, as he returned to Mecca from 
hunting. Hamza was no proselyte to Islamism, but he was 
pledged to protect his nephew. Marching with his bow un¬ 
strung in his hand to an assemblage of the Koreishites, where 
Abu Jahl was vaunting his recent triumph, he dealt the boaster 
a blow over the head that inflicted a grievous wound. The 
kinsfolk of Abu Jahl rushed to his assistance, but the brawler 
stood in awe of the vigorous arm and fiery spirit of Hamza, 
and sought to pacify him. “Let him alone,” said he to his 
kinsfolk; “in truth I have treated his nephew very roughly.” 
He alleged in palliation of his outrage the apostasy of Mahomet; 
but Hamza was not to be appeased. “ Well!” cried he, fiercely 
and scornfully, “I also do not believe in your gods of stone; 
can you compel me?” Anger produced in his bosom what 
reasoning might have attempted in vain. He forthwith de¬ 
clared himself a convert; took the oath of adhesion to the 
prophet, and became one of the most zealous and valiant cham¬ 
pions of the new faith. 


60 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER X. 

OMAR IBN AL KHATTAB, NEPHEW OF ABU JAHL, UNDERTAKES TO 
REVENGE HIS UNCLE BY SLAYING MAHOMET—HIS WONDERFUL 
CONVERSION TO THE FAITH-MAHOMET TAKES REFUGE IN A 
CASTLE OF ABU TALEB—ABU SOFIAN, AT THE HEAD OF THE 
RIVAL BRANCH OF KOREISHITES, PERSECUTES MAHOMET AND 
HIS FOLLOWERS—OBTAINS A DECREE OF NON-INTERCOURSE WITH 
THEM—MAHOMET LEAVES HIS RETREAT AND MAKES CONVERTS 
DURING THE MONTH OF PILGRIMAGE—LEGEND OF THE CON¬ 
VERSION OF HABIB THE WISE. 

The hatred of Abu Jahl to the prophet was increased by the 
severe punishment received at the hands of Hamza. He had 
a nephew named Omar Ibn al Khattab; twenty-six years of 
age; of gigantic stature, prodigious strength, and great cour¬ 
age. His savage aspect appalled the bold, and his very walk¬ 
ing-staff struck more terror into beholders than another man’s 
sword. Such are the words of the Arabian historian, Abu 
Abdallah Mohamed Ibn Omal Alwakedi, and the subsequent 
feats of this warrior prove that they were scarce chargeable 
with exaggeration. 

Instigated by his uncle Abu Jahl, this fierce Arab undertook 
to penetrate to the retreat of Mahomet, who was still in the 
house of Orkham, and to strike a poniard to his heart. The 
Koreishites are accused of having promised him one hundred 
camels and one thousand ounces of gold for this deed of blood; 
but this is improbable, nor did the vengeful nephew of Abu 
Jahl need a bribe. 

As he was on his way to the house of Orkham he met a 
Koreishite, to whom he imparted his design. The Koreishite 
was a secret convert to Islamism, and sought to turn him from 
his bloody errand. “Before you slay Mahomet,” said he, “and 
draw upon yourself the vengeance of his relatives, see that 
your own are free from heresy.” “Are any of mine guilty of 
backsliding?” demanded Omar with astonishment. “Even 
so,” was the reply; “thy sister Amina and her husband Seid.” 

Omar hastened to the dwelling of his sister, and, entering it 
abruptly, found her and her husband reading the Koran. Seid 
attempted to conceal it, but his confusion convinced Omar of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSOES. 


61 


the truth of the accusation, and heightened his fury. In his 
rage he struck Seid to the earth, placed his foot upon his breast, 
and would have plunged his sword into it, had not his sister 
interposed. A blow on the face bathed her visage in blood. 

1 ‘ Enemy of Allah!” sobbed Amina, ‘ ‘ dost thou strike me thus 
for believing in the only true God? In despite of thee and thy 
violence, I will persevere in the true faith. Yes,” added she 
with fervor, ‘ ‘ ‘ There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his 
prophet;’ and now, Omar, finish thy work!” 

Omar paused, repented of his violence, and took his foot 
from the bosom of Seid. 

“ Show me the writing,” said he. Amina, however, refused 
to let him touch the sacred scroll until he had washed his 
hands. The passage which he read is said to have been the 
twentieth chapter of the Koran, which thus begins: 

“ In the name of the most merciful God! We have not sent 
down the Koran to inflict misery on mankind, but as a moni¬ 
tor, to teach him to believe in the true God, the creator of the 
earth and the lofty heavens. 

“The all merciful is enthroned on high, to him belongeth 
whatsoever is in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, 
and in the regions under the earth. 

“Dost thou utter thy prayers with a loud voice? know that 
there is no need. God knoweth the secrets of thy heart; yea, 
that which is most hidden. 

“Verily, I am God; there is none beside me. Serve me, 
serve none other. Offer up thy prayer to none but me.” 

The words of the Koran sank deep into the heart of Omar. 
He read farther, and was more and more moved, but when 
he came to the parts treating of the resurrection and of j udg- 
ment his conversion was complete. 

He pursued his way to the house of Orkham, but with an 
altered heart. Knocking humbly at the door, he craved ad¬ 
mission. “ Come in, son of al Khattab,” exclaimed Mahomet. 
“ What brings thee hither?” 

“ I come to enroll my name among the believers of God and 
his prophet.” So saying, he made the Moslem profession of 
faith. 

He was not content until his conversion was publicly 
known. At his request Mahomet accompanied him instantly 
to the Caaba, to perform openly the rites of Islamism. Omar 
walked on the left hand of the prophet, and Hamza on the 
right, to protect him from injury and insult, and they were 


62 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


followed by upward of forty disciples. They passed in open 
day through the streets of Mecca, to the astonishment of its 
inhabitants. Seven times did they make the circuit of the 
Caaba, touching each time the sacred black stone, and com¬ 
plying with all the other ceremonials. The Koreishites re¬ 
garded this procession with dismay, but dared not approach 
nor molest the prophet, being deterred by the looks of those 
terrible men of battle, Hamza and Omar; who, it is said, 
glared upon them like two lions that had been robbed of their 
young. • 

Fearless and resolute in everything, Omar went by himself 
the next day to pray as a Moslem in the Caaba, in open defi¬ 
ance of the Koreishites. Another Moslem, who entered the 
temple, was interrupted in his worship, and rudely treated; 
but no one molested Omar, because he was the nephew of Abu 
Jalil. Omar repaired to his uncle, “i renounce tky protec¬ 
tion,” said he. “I will not be better off than my fellow-believ¬ 
ers.” From that time he cast his lot with the followers of 
Mahomet, and was one of his most strenuous defenders. 

Such was the wonderful conversion of Omar, afterward the 
most famous champion of the Islam faith. So exasperated 
were the Koreishites by this new triumph of Mahomet, that 
his uncle, Abu Taleb, feared they might attempt the life of his 
nephew, either by treachery or open violence. At his earnest 
entreaties, therefore, the latter, accompanied by some of his 
principal disciples, withdrew to a kind of castle, or stronghold, 
belonging to Abu Taleb, in the neighborhood of the city. 

The protection thus given by Abu Taleb, the head of the 
Haschemites, and by others of his line, to Mahomet and his 
followers, although differing from them in faith, drew on them 
the wrath of the rival branch of the Koreishites, and produced 
a schism in the tribe. Abu Sofian, the head of that branch, 
availed himself of the heresies of the prophet to throw dis- 
I credit, not merely upon such of his kindred as had embraced 
f his faith, but upon the whole line of Haschem, which, though 
dissenting from his doctrines, had, through mere clannish 
feelings, protected him. It is evident the hostility of Abu 
Sofian arose, not merely from personal hatred or religious 
scruples, but from family feud. He was ambitious of trans¬ 
ferring to his own line the honors of the city so long engrossed 
by the Haschemites. The last measure of the kind-hearted 
Abu Taleb, in placing Mahomet beyond the reach of persecu¬ 
tion, and giving him a castle as a refuge, was seized upon by 


MAUOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


63 


Abu Sofian and bis adherents, as a pretext for a general ban of 
the rival line. They accordingly issued a decree, forbidding 
the rest of the tribe of Koreish from intermarrying, or holding 
any intercourse, even of bargain or sale, with the Haschem- 
ites, until they should deliver up their kinsman, Mahomet, 
for punishment. This decree, which took place in the seventh 
year of what is called the mission of the prophet, was written 
on parchment and hung up in the Caaba. It reduced Ma¬ 
homet and his disciples to great straits, being almost famished 
at times in the stronghold in which they had taken refuge. 
The fortress was also beleaguered occasionally by the Koreish- 
ites, to enforce the ban in all its rigor, and to prevent the pos¬ 
sibility of supplies. 

The annual season of pilgrimage, however, when hosts of 
pilgrims repair from all parts of Arabia to Mecca, brought 
transient relief to the persecuted Moslems. During that sacred 
season, according to immemorial law and usage among the 
Arabs, all hostilities were suspended, and warring tribes met 
in temporary peace to worship at the Caaba. At such times 
Mahomet and his disciples would venture from their strong¬ 
hold and return to Mecca. Protected also by the immunity of 
the holy month, Mahomet would mingle among the pilgrims 
and preach and pray: propound his doctrines, and proclaim 
his revelations. In this* way he made many converts, who, on 
their return to their several homes, carried with them the seeds 
of the new faith to distant regions. Among these converts 
were occasionally the princes or heads of tribes, whose exam¬ 
ple had an influence on their adherents. Arabian legends give 
a pompous and extravagant account of the conversion of one 
of these princes; which, as it was attended by some of the 
most noted miracles recorded of Mahomet, may not be un¬ 
worthy of an abbreviated insertion. 

The prince in question was Habib Ibn Malec, surnamed the 
Wise on account of his vast knowledge and erudition; for he 
is represented as deeply versed in magic and the sciences, and 
acquainted with all religions, to their very foundations, hav¬ 
ing read all that had been written concerning them, and also 
acquired practical information, for he had belonged to them 
all by turns, having been Jew, Christian, and one of the Magi. 
It is true, he had had more than usual time for his studies and 
experience, having, according to Arabian legend, attained to 
the age of one hundred and forty years. He now came to 
Mecca at the head of a powerful host of twenty thousand men, 


64 


MAHOMET AND HI& SUCCESSOR. 


bringing with him a youthful daughter, Satiha, whom he must 
have begotten in a ripe old age; and for whom he was putting 
up prayers at the Caaba, she having been struck dumb and 
deaf, and blind, and deprived of the use of her limbs. 

Abu Sofian and Abu Jahl, according to the legend, thought 
the presence of this very powerful, very idolatrous, and very 
wise old prince, at the head of so formidable a host, a favor¬ 
able opportunity to effect the ruin of Mahomet. They accord¬ 
ingly informed Habib the Wise of the heresies of the pretended 
prophet, and prevailed upon the venerable prince to summon 
him into his presence at his encampment in the Valley of 
Flints, there to defend his doctrines, in the hope that his 
obstinacy in error would draw upon him banishment or death. 

The legend gives a magnificent account of the issuing forth 
of the idolatrous Koreishites, in proud array, on horseback 
and on foot, led by Abu Sofian and Abu Jahl, to attend the 
grand inquisition in the Valley of Flints: and of the oriental 
state in which they were received by Habib the Wise, seated 
under a tent of crimson, on a throne of ebony, inlaid with 
ivory and sandalwood and covered with plates of gold. 

Mahomet was in the dwelling of Cadijah when he received a 
summons to this formidable tribunal. Cadijah was loud in her 
expressions of alarm, and his daughters hung about his neck, 
weeping and lamenting, for they thought him going to certain 
death; but he gently rebuked their fears, and bade them trust 
in Allah. 

Unlike the ostentatious state of his enemies, Abu Sofian and 
Abu Jahl, he approached the scene of trial in simple guise, 
clad in a white garment, with a black turban, and a mantle 
which had belonged to his grandfather Abd al Motalleb, and 
was made of the stuff of Aden. His hair floated below his 
shoulders, the mysterious light of prophecy beamed from his 
countenance; and though he had not anointed his beard, nor 
used any perfumes, excepting a little musk and camphor for 
the hair of his upper lip, yet wherever he passed a bland odor 
diffused itself around, being, say the Arabian writers, the fra¬ 
grant emanations from his person. 

He was preceded by the zealous Abu Beker, clad in a scar¬ 
let vest and a white turban, with his mantle gathered up 
under his arms, so as to display his scarlet slippers. 

A silent awe, continues the legend, fell upon the vast assem¬ 
blage as the prophet approached. Not a murmur, not a whis¬ 
per was f> v be heard. The very brute animals were charmed 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 65 

to silence; and the neighing of the steed, the bellowing of the 
camel, and the braying of the ass were mute. 

The venerable Habib received him graciously: his first ques¬ 
tion was to the point. “ They tell thou dost pretend to be a 
prophet sent from God? Is it so?” 

“Even so,” replied Mahomet. “Allah has sent me to pro¬ 
claim the veritable faith.” 

“Good,” rejoined the wary sage, “but every prophet has 
given proof of his mission by signs and miracles. Noah had 
his rainbow; Solomon his mysterious ring; Abraham the fire 
of the furnace, which became cool at his command; Isaac the 
cam, which was sacrificed in his stead; Moses his wonder¬ 
working rod, and Jesus brought the dead to life, and appeased 
tempests with a word. If, then, thou art really a prophet, 
give us a miracle in proof.” 

The adherents of Mahomet trembled for him when they 
heard this request, and Abu Jahl clapped his hands and ex¬ 
tolled the sagacity of Habib the Wise. But the prophet 
rebuked him with scorn. “ Peace! dog of thy race!” exclaimed 
he; “disgrace of thy kindred, and of thy tribe.” He then 
calmly proceeded to execute the wishes of Habib. 

The first miracle demanded of Mahomet was to reveal what 
Habib had within his tent, and why he had brought it to 
Mecca. 

Upon this, says the legend, Mahomet bent toward the earth 
and traced figures upon the sand. Then raising his head, he 
replied, “Oh Habib! thou hast brought hither thy daughter, 
Satiha, deaf and dumb, and lame and blind, in the hope of 
obtaining relief of Heaven. Go to thy tent; speak to her, and 
hear her reply, and know that God is all powerful.” 

The aged prince hastened to his tent. His daughter met him 
with light step and extended arms, perfect in all her facul¬ 
ties, her eyes beaming with joy, her face clothed with smiles, 
and more beauteous than the moon in an unclouded night. 

The second miracle demanded by Habib was still more diffi¬ 
cult. It was that Mahomet should cover the noontide heaven 
with supernatural darkness, and cause the moon to descend 
aiid rest upon the top of the Caaba. 

The prophet performed this miracle as easily as the first. At 
his summons, a darkness blotted out the whole light of day. 
The moon was then seen straying from her course and wander¬ 
ing about the firmament. By the irresistible power of the 
prophet, she was drawn from the heavens and rested on the 


66 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


top of the Caaba. She then performed seven circuits about it, 
after the manner of the pilgrims, and having made a profound 
reverence to Mahomet, stood before him with lambent waver¬ 
ing motion, like a flaming sword; giving him the salutation of 
peace, and hailing him as a prophet. 

Not content with this miracle, pursues the legend, Mahomet 
compelled the obedient luminary to enter by the right sleeve 
of his mantle, and go out by the left; then to divide into two 
parts, one of which went toward the east, and the other 
toward the west, and meeting in the centre of the firmament, 
reunited themselves into a round and glorious orb. 

It is needless to say that Habib the Wise was convinced, and 
converted by these miracles, as were also four hundred and 
seventy of the inhabitants of Mecca. Abu Jahl, however, was 
hardened in unbelief, exclaiming that all was illusion and en¬ 
chantment produced by the magic of Mahomet. 

Note.— The miracles here recorded are not to be found in the pages of the accu¬ 
rate Abulfeda, nor are they maintained by any of the graver of the Moslem writers; 
but they exist in tradition, and are set forth with great prolixity by apocryphal au 
thors, who insist that they are alluded to in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Koran 
They are probably as true as many other of the wonders related of the prophet. It 
will be remembered that he himself claimed but one miracle, “ the Koran.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE BAN OF NON-INTERCOURSE MYSTERIOUSLY DESTROYED — 
MAHOMET ENABLED TO RETURN TO MECCA—DEATH OF ABU 
TALEB; OF CADIJAH—MAHOMET BETROTHS HIMSELF TO AYE- 
SHA—MARRIES SAWDA—THE KOREISHITES RENEW THEIR PER¬ 
SECUTION—MAHOMET SEEKS AN ASYLUM IN TAYEF—HIS EX¬ 
PULSION THENCE—VISITED BY GENH IN THE DESERT OF 
NAKLAH. 

Three years had elapsed since Mahomet and his disciples 
took refuge in the castle of Abu Taleb. The ban or decree still 
existed in the Caaba, cutting them off from all intercourse 
with the rest of their tribe. The sect, as usual, increased un¬ 
der persecution. Many joined it in Mecca; murmurs arose 
against the unnatural feud engendered among the Eoreishites 
and Abu Sofian was made to blush for the lengths to which he 
had carried his hostility against some of his kindred. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


07 


All at once it was discovered that the parchment in the Caaba, 
on which the decree had been written, was so substantially 
destroyed that nothing of the writing remained but the initial 
words, “In thy name, oh Almighty God!” The decree was, 
therefore, declared to be annulled, and Mahomet and his fol¬ 
lowers were permitted to return to Mecca unmolested. The 
mysterious removal of this legal obstacle has been considered 
by pious Moslems another miracle wrought by supernatural 
agency in favor of the prophet; though unbelievers have sur¬ 
mised that the document, which was becoming embarrassing in 
its effects to Abu Sofian himself, was secretly destroyed by 
mortal hands. 

The return of Mahomet and his disciples to Mecca was fol¬ 
lowed by important conversions, both of inhabitants of the 
city and of pilgrims from afar. The chagrin experienced by 
the Koreishites from the growth of this new sect was soothed 
by tidings of victories of the Persians over the Greeks, by 
which they conquered Syria and a part of Egypt. The idola¬ 
trous Koreishites exulted in the defeat of the Christian Greeks, 
whose faith, being opposed to the worship of idols, they as¬ 
similated to that preached by Mahomet. The latter replied to 
their taunts and exultations by producing the thirtieth chapter 
of the Koran, opening with these words: “The Greeks have 
been overcome by the Persians, but they shall overcome the 
latter in the course of a few years.” 

The zealous and believing Abu Beker made a wager of ten 
camels that this prediction would be accomplished within three 
years. ‘ ‘ Increase the wager, but lengthen the time, ” whispered 
Mahomet. Abu Beker staked one hundred camels, but made 
the time nine years. The prediction was verified, and the 
wager won. This anecdote is confidently cited by Moslem 
doctors as a proof that the Koran came down from heaven, 
and that Mahomet possessed the gift of prophecy. The whole, 
if true, was no doubt a shrewd guess into futurity, suggested 
by a knowledge of the actual state of the warring powers. 

Not long after his return to Mecca, Mahomet was summoned 
to close the eyes of his uncle, Abu Taleb, then upward of four¬ 
score years of age, and venerable in character as in person. 
As the hour of death drew nigh, Mahomet exhorted his undo 
to make the profession of faith necessary, according to the 
Islam creed, to secure a blissful resurrection. 

A spark of earthly pride lingered in the breast of the dying 
patriarch. “ Oh son of my brother!” replied he, “should I re- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


d* 

peat those words, the Koreishites would say, I did so through 
fear of death. ” 

Abulfeda, the historian, insists that Abu Taleb actually died 
in the faith. A1 Abbas, he says, hung over the bed of his ex¬ 
piring brother, and perceiving his lips to move, approached his 
ear to catch his dying words. They were the wished-for confes¬ 
sion. Others affirm that his last words were, “ I die h: the 
faith of Abd al Motalleb.” Commentators have sought to 
reconcile the two accounts by asserting that Abd al Motalleb, 
in his latter days, renounced the worship of idols, and believed 
in the unity of God. 

Scarce three days had elapsed from the death of the vener¬ 
able Abu Taleb, when Cadijah, the faithful and devoted wife 
of Mahomet, likewise sank into the grave. She was sixty-five 
years of age. Mahomet wept bitterly at her tomb, and clothed 
himself in mourning for her, and for Abu Taleb, so that this 
year was called the year of mourning. He was comforted in 
his affliction, says the Arabian author, Abu Horaira, by an 
assurance from the angel Gabriel that a silver palace was 
allotted to Cadijah in Paradise, as a reward for her great faith 
and her early services tro the cause. 

Though Cadijah had been much older than Mahomet at the 
time of their marriage, and past the bloom of years when 
women are desirable in the East, and though the prophet was 
noted for an amorous temperament, yet he is said to have 
remained true to her to the last, nor ever availed himself of the 
Arabian law, permitting a plurality of wives, to give her a 
rival in his house. When, however, she was laid in the grave, 
and the first transport of his grief had subsided, he sought to 
console himself for her loss by entering anew into wedlock, 
and henceforth indulged in a plurality of wives. He permit¬ 
ted, by his law, four wives to each of his followers; but did 
not limit himself to that number; for he observed that a 
prophet, being peculiarly gifted and privileged, was not bound 
fco restrict himself to the same laws as ordinary mortals. 

His first choice was made within a month after the death of 
Cadijah, and fell upon a beautiful child named Ayesha, the 
daughter of his faithful adherent, Abu Beker. Perhaps he 
sought by this alliance to grapple Abu Beker still more strongly 
to his side; he being one of the bravest and most popular of 
his tribe. Ayesha, however, was but seven years of age, and, 
though females soon bloom and ripen in those eastern climes, 
she was yet too young to enter into the married state. He 


MAHOMET AND Ills SUCCESSORS. 


69 


was merely betrothed to her, therefore, and postponed their 
nuptials for two years, during which time he caused her to bo 
carefully instructed in the accomplishments proper to an 
Arabian maiden of distinguished rank. 

Upon this wife, thus chosen in the very blossom of her years, 
the prophet doted more passionately than upon any of those 
whom he subsequently married. All these had been previously 
experienced in wedlock; Ayesha, he said, was the only one 
who came a pure unspotted virgin to his arms. 

Still, that he might not be without due solace while Ayesha 
was attaining the marriageable age, he took as a wife Sawda, 
the widow of Sokran, one of his followers. She had been nurse 
to his daughter Fatima, and was one of the faithful who fled 
into Abyssinia from the early persecutions of the people of 
Mecca. It is pretended that, while in exile, she had a mysteri¬ 
ous intimation of the future honor which awaited her; for she 
dreamt that Mahomet laid his head upon her bosom. She 
recounted the dream to her husband Sokran, who interpreted 
it as a prediction of his speedy death, and of her marriage 
with the prophet. 

The marriage, whether predicted or not, was one of mere 
expediency. Mahomet never loved Sawda with the affection 
he manifested for his other wives. He would even have put 
her away in after years, but she implored to be allowed the 
honor of still calling herself his wife; proffering that, whenever 
it should come to her turn to share the marriage bed, she 
would relinquish her right to Ayesha. Mahomet consented to 
an arrangement which favored his love for the latter, and 
Sawda continued, as long as she lived, to be nominally his 
wife. 

Mahomet soon became sensible of the loss he had sustained 
in the death of Abu Taleb, who had been not merely an affec¬ 
tionate relative, but a steadfast and powerful protector, from 
his great influence in Mecca. At his death there was no one 
‘to chock and counteract the hostilities of Abu Sofian and Abu 
Jafcl, who soon raised up such a spirit of persecution among 
the Koreishites that Mahomet found it unsafe to continue in 
his native place. He set out, therefore, accompanied by his 
freedman Zeid, to seek a refuge at Tayef, a small walled town, 
about seventy miles from Mecca, inhabited by the Thakifites, 
or Arabs of the tribe of Thakeef. It was one of the favored 
places of Arabia, situated among vineyards and gardens. 
Here grew peaches and plums, melons and pomegranates ; figs, 


70 


MAllOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


blue and green, the nebeck-tree producing the lotus, and palm- 
trees with their clusters of green and golden fruit. So fresh 
were its pastures and fruitful its fields, contrasted with the 
sterility of the neighboring deserts, that the Arabs fabled it to 
have originally been a part of Syria, broken off and floated 
hither at the time of the deluge. 

Mahomet entered the gates of Tayef with some degree of 
confidence, trusting for protection to the influence of his uncle 
A1 Abbas, who had possessions there. He could not have 
chosen a worse place of refuge. Tayef was one of the strong¬ 
holds of idolatry. Here was maintained in all its force the 
worship of El Lat, one of the female idols already mentioned. 
Her image of stone was covered with jewels and precious 
stones, the offerings of her votaries; it was believed to be in¬ 
spired with life, and the intercession of El Lat was implored as 
one of the daughters of God. 

Mahomet remained about a month in Tayef, seeking in vain 
to make proselytes among its inhabitants. When he attempt¬ 
ed to preach his doctrines, his voice was drowned by clamors. 
More than once he was wounded by stones thrown at him, 
and which the faithful Zeid endeavored in vain to ward off. 
So violent did the popular fury become at last that he was 
driven from the city, and even pursued for some distance be¬ 
yond the walls by an insulting rabble of slaves and children. 

Thus driven ignominiously from his hoped-for place of 
refuge, and not daring to return openly to his native city, he 
remained in the desert until Zeid should procure a secret 
asylum for him among his friends in Mecca. In this extrem¬ 
ity he had one of those visions or supernatural visitations 
which appear always to have occurred in lonely or agitated 
moments, when we may suppose him to have been in a state 
of mental excitement. In was after the evening prayer, he 
says, in a solitary place in the valley of Naklah, between 
Mecca and Tayef. He was reading the Koran, when he was 
overheard by a passing company of Gins or Genii. These are 
spiritual beings, some good, others bad, and liable like man to 
future rewards and punishments. “ Hark! give ear!” said the 
Genii one to the other. They paused and listened as Maho¬ 
met continued to read. “Verily,” said they at the end, “we 
have heard an admirable discourse, which directeth unto the 
right institution; wherefore we believe therein.” 

This spiritual visitation consoled Mahomet for his expulsion 
from Tayef, showing that though he and his doctrines might 


MAHOMET AJSD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


71 


be rejected by men, they were held in reverence by spiritual 
intelligences. At least, so we may infer from the mention he 
makes of it in the forty-sixth and seventy-second chapters of 
the Koran. Thenceforward he declared himself sent for the 
conversion of these genii as well as of the human race. 

Note. —The belief in genii was prevalent throughout the East, long before the 
time of Mahomet. They were supposed to haunt solitary places, particularly 
toward nightfall; a superstition congenial to the habits and notions of the inhabit 
tants of lonely and desert countries. The Arabs supposed every valley and barren 
waste to have its tribe of genii, who were subject to a dominant spirit, and roamed 
forth at night to beset the pilgrim and the traveller. Whenever, therefore, they 
entered a lonely valley toward the close of evening, they used to supplicate the 
presiding spirit or lord of the place to protect them from the evil genii under his 
command. 

Those columns of dust raised by whirling eddies of wind, and which sweep across 
the desert, are supposed to be caused by some evil genius or sprite of gigantic 
size. 

The serpents which occasionally infest houses were thought to be often genii, 
some infidels and some believers. ' Mahomet cautioned his followers to be slow to 
kill a house serpent. “ Warn him to depart; if he do not obey, then kill him, for it 
is a sign that he is a mere reptile or an infidel genius.” 

It is fabled that in eaidier times the genii had admission to heaven, but were ex¬ 
pelled on account of their meddling propensities. They have ever since been of a 
curious and prying nature, often attempting to clamber up to the constellations; 
thence to peep into heaven, and see and overhear what is going on there. They 
are, however, driven thence by angels with flaming swords; and those meteors 
called shooting stars are supposed by Mahometans to be darted by the guardian 
angels at these intrusive genii. 

Other legends pretend that the earth was originally peopled by these genii, 
but they rebelled against the Most High, and usurped terrestrial dominion, which 
they maintained for two thousand years. At length, Azazil, or Lucifer, was sent 
against them, and defeated them, overthrowing their mighty king Gian ben Gian, 
the founder of the pyramids, whose magic buckler of talismanic virtue fell subse¬ 
quently into the hands of king Solomon the Wise, giving him power over the spells 
and charms of magicians and evil genii. The rebel spirits, defeated and humili¬ 
ated, were driven into an obscure corner of the earth. Then it was that God 
created man, with less dangerous faculties and powers, and gave him the world for 
a habitation. 

The angels, according to Moslem notions, were created from bright gems; the 
genii from fire without smoke, and Adam from clay. 

Mahomet, when in the seventy-second chapter of the Koran he alludes to the 
visitation of the genii in the valley of Naklali, makes them give the following frank 
account of themselves: 

“We formerly attempted to pry into what was transacting in heaven, but we 
found the same guarded by angels with flaming darts; and we sat on some of the 
seats thereof to hear the discourse of its inhabitants; but whoso listeneth now finds 
a flame prepared to guard the celestial confines. There are some among us who 
are Moslems, and there are others who swerve from righteousness. Whoso era- 
braceth Islamism seeketh the true direction; but those who swerve from righteous* 
ness shall be fuel for the fire of Jekennam.” 


72 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XII. 

NIGHT JOURNEY OF THE PROPHET FROM MECCA TO JERUSALEM. 

AND THENCE TO THE SEVENTH HEAVEN. 

An asylum being provided for Mahomet in the house of 
Mutem Ibn Adi, one of his disciples, he ventured to return to 
Mecca. The supernatural visitation of genii in the valley of 
Naklah was soon followed by a vision or revelation far more 
extraordinary, and which has ever since remained a theme of 
comment and conjecture among devout Mahometans. We 
allude to the famous night journey to Jerusalem, and thence 
to the seventh heaven. The particulars of it, though given as 
if in the very words of Mahomet, rest merely on tradition; 
some, however, cite texts corroborative of it, scattered here 
and there in the Koran. 

We do not pretend to give this vision or revelation in its 
amplitude and wild extravagance, but will endeavor to seize 
upon its most essential features. 

The night on which it occurred is described as one of the 
darkest and most awfully silent that had ever been known. 
There was no ^rowing of cocks nor barking of dogs; no howl¬ 
ing of wild beasts nor hooting of owls. The very waters ceased 
to murmur, and the winds to whistle; all nature seemed 
motionless and dead. In the mid watches of the night Ma¬ 
homet was roused by a voice, crying, “Awake, thou sleeper!” 
The angel Gabriel stood before him. His forehead was clear 
and serene, his complexion white as snow, his hair floated on 
his shoulders; he had wings of many dazzling hues, and his 
robes were sown with pearls and embroidered with gold. 

He brought Mahomet a white steed of wonderful form and 
qualities, unlike any animal he had ever seen; and in truth it 
differs from any animal ever before described. It had a 
human face, but the cheeks of a horse; its eyes were as ja¬ 
cinths and radiant as stars. It had eagle’s wings all glittering 
with rays of light; and its whole form was resplendent with 
gems and precious stones. It was a female, and from its daz¬ 
zling splendor and incredible velocity was called A1 Borak, or 
Lightning. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 73 

Mahomet prepared to mount this supernatural steed, but as 
he extended his hand, it drew back and reared. 

“Be still, oh Borak!” said Gabriel; “respect the prophet of 
God. Never wert thou mounted by mortal man more honored 
of Allah. ” 

“Oh Gabriel!” ^*1 A1 Borak, who at this time was mi¬ 
raculously endowed'with speech; “did not Abraham of old, the 
friend of God, bestride me when he visited his son Ishmaelt 
Oh Gabriel! is not this the mediator, the intercessor, the 
author of the profession of faith?” 

“Even so, oh Borak, this is Mahomet Ibn Abdallah, of one 
of the tribes of Arabia the Happy, and of the true faith. He is 
chief of the sons of Adam, the greatest of the divine legates, 
the seal of the prophets. All creatures must have his interces¬ 
sion before they can enter paradise. Heaven is on his right 
hand, to be the reward of those who believe in him: the fire of 
Jehennam is on his left hand, into which all shall be thrust 
who oppose his doctrines.” 

“Oh Gabriel!” entreated A1 Borak; “by the faith existing 
between thee and him, prevail on him to intercede for me at 
the day of the resurrection.” 

“Be assured, oh Borak!”exclaimed Mahomet, “that through 
my intercession thou shalt enter paradise.” 

No sooner had he uttered these words than the animal ap¬ 
proached and submitted to be mounted, then rising with Ma¬ 
homet on its back, it soared aloft far above the mountains of 
Mecca. 

As they passed like lightning between heaven and earth, 
Gabriel cried aloud, “Stop, oh Mahomet! descend to the earth, 
and make the prayer,with two inflections of the body.” 

They alighted on the earth, and having made the prayer— 

“Oh friend and well beloved of my soul,” said Mahomet, 
“ why dost thou command me to pray in this place?” 

“Because it is Mount Sinai, on which God communed with 
Moses.” 

Mounting aloft, they again passed rapidly between heaven 
and earth, until Gabriel called out a second time, “Stop, oh 
Mahomet! descend and make the prayer with two inflections.” 

They descended, Mahomet prayed, and again demanded, 
“ Why didst thou command me to pray in this place?” 

“ Because it is Bethlehem, where Jesus the Son of Mary was 
born.” 

They resumed their course through the air. until a voice was 


74 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


heard on the right, exclaiming, “Oh Mahomet, tarry a mo¬ 
ment, that I may speak to thee; of all created beings I am 
most devoted to thee.” 

But Borak pressed forward, and Mahomet forbore to tarry, 
for he felt that it was not with him to stay his course, but with 
God, the all-powerful and glorious. 

Another voice was now heard on the left, calling on Mahomet 
in like words to tarry; but Borak still pressed forward, and 
Mahomet tarried not. He now beheld before him a damsel of 
ravishing beauty, adorned with all the luxury and riches of 
the earth. She beckoned him with alluring smiles: “ Tarry a 
moment, oh Mahomet, that I may talk with thee. I, who, of 
all beings, am the most devoted to thee.” But still Borak 
pressed on, and Mahomet tarried not; considering that it was 
not with him to stay his course, but with God the all-powerful 
and glorious. 

Addressing himself, however, to Gabriel, “ What voices are 
those I have heard?” said he; “and what damsel is this who 
has beckoned to me?” 

“The first, oh Mahomet, was the voice of a Jew; hadst thou 
listened to him, all thy nation would have been won to Juda¬ 
ism. 

“The second was the voice of a Christian; hadst thou lis¬ 
tened to him, thy people would have inclined to Christianity. 

“ The damsel was the world, with all its riches, its vanities, 
and allurements; hadst thou listened to her, thy nation would 
have chosen the pleasures of this life, rather than the bliss of 
eternity, and all would have been doomed to perdition.” 

Continuing their aerial course, they arrived at the gate of 
the holy temple at Jerusalem, where, alighting from A1 Borak, 
Mahomet fastened her to the rings where the prophets before 
him had fastened her. Then entering the temple he found 
there Abraham, and Moses, and Isa (Jesus), and many more of 
the prophets. After he had prayed in company with them for 
a time, a ladder of light was let down from heaven, until the 
lower end rested on the Shakra, or foundation stone of the 
sacred house, being the stone of Jacob. Aided by the angel 
Gabriel, Mahomet ascended this ladder with the rapidity of 
lightning. 

Being arrived at the first heaven, Gabriel knocked at the 
gate. Who is there? was demanded from within. Gabriel. 
Who is with thee? Mahomet. Has he received his mission? 
He has. Then he is welcome! and the gate was opened. 


MAHOMET AJS'D HIS SUCCESSORS. 75 

This first heaven was of pure silver; and in its resplendent 
vault the stars are suspended by chains of gold. In each star 
an angel is placed sentinel, to prevent the demons from scaling 
the sacred abodes. As Mahomet entered an ancient man ap¬ 
proached him, and Gabriel said, “Here is thy father Adam 
pay him reverence.” Mahomet did so, and Adam embraced 
him, calling him the greatest among his children, and the first 
among the prophets. 

In this heaven were innumerable animals of all kinds, which 
Gabriel said were angels, who, under these forms, interceded 
with Allah for the various races of annuals upon earth. 
Among these was a cock of dazzling whiteness, and of such 
marvellous height that his crest touched the second heaven, 
though five hundred years’ journey above the first. This won¬ 
derful bird saluted the ear of Allah each morning with his 
melodious chant. All creatures on earth, save man, are 
awakened by his voice, and all the fowls of his kind chant hal¬ 
lelujahs in emulation of his note.* 

They now ascended to the second heaven. Gabriel, as 
before, knocked at the gate; the same questions and replies 
were exchanged; the door opened and they entered. 

This heaven was all of polished steel, and dazzling splendor. 
Here they found Noah, who, embracing Mahomet, hailed him 
as the greatest among the prophets. 

Arrived at the third heaven, they entered with the same 
ceremonies. It was all studded with precious stones, and too 
brilliant for mortal eyes. Here was seated an angel of immear 
surable height, whose eyes were seventy thousand days’ jour¬ 
ney apart. He had at his command a hundred thousand batta- 


* There are three to which, say the Moslem doctors, God always lends a willing 
ear: the voice of him who reads the Koran; of him who prays for pardon; and of 
this cock who crows to the glory of the Most High. When the last day is near, 
they add, Allah will bid this bird to close his wings and chant no more. Then all 
the cocks on earth will cease to crow, and their silence will be a sign that the great 
day of judgment is impending. 

The Reverend Dr. Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, in his Life of Mahomet, 
accuses him of having stolen this wonderful cock from the tract Bava Bartha of 
the Babylonish Talmud, “ wherein,” says he, “ we have a story of such a prodi¬ 
gious bird, called Zig, which, standing with his feet on the earth, reacheth up to 
the heavens with his head, and with the spreading of his wings darkeneth the whole 
orb of the sun, and causeth a total eclipse thereof. This bird the Chaldee para- 
phrast on the Psalms says is a cock, and that he crows before the Lord; and the 
Chaldee paraphrast on Job tells us of his crowing every morning before the Lord, 
— id that God giveth him wisdom for that purpose.” 



7(5 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Jions of armed men. Before Mm was spread a vast book, in 
wMch he was continually writing and blotting out. 

“This, oh Mahomet,” said Gab riel, “is Azrael, the angel of 
death, who is in the confidence of Allah. In the book beforo 
him he is continually writing i he names of those who are to be 
born, and blotting out the names of those who have lived 
their allotted time, and who, therefore, instantly die.” 

They now mounted to the fourth heaven, formed of the 
finest silver. Among the angels who inhabited it was one five 
hundred days’ journey in height. His countenance was trou¬ 
bled, and rivers of tears ran from his eyes. “This,” said 
Gabriel, “ is the angel of tears, appointed to weep over the sins 
of the children of men, and to predict the evils wMch await 
them. ” 

The fifth heaven was of the finest gold. Here Mahomet was 
received by Aaron with embraces and Congratulations. The 
avenging angel dwells in this heaven, and presides over the 
element of fire. Of all the angels seen by Mahomet, he was 
the most hideous and terrific. His visage seemed of copper, 
and was covered with wens and warts. His eyes flashed light¬ 
ning, and he grasped a flaming lance. He sat on a throne sur¬ 
rounded by flames, and before him was a heap of red-hot 
chains. Were he to alight upon earth in his true form, the 
mountains would be consumed, the seas dried up, and all the 
inhabitants would die with terror. To him, and the angels his 
ministers, is intrusted the execution of divine vengeance on 
infidels and sinners. 

Leaving this awful abode, they mounted to the sixth heaven, 
composed of a transparent stone, called Hasala, wMch may be 
rendered carbuncle. Here was a great angel, composed half of 
snow and half of fire; yet the snow melted not, nor was the 
fire extinguished. Around him a choir of lesser angels con¬ 
tinually exclaimed, “Oh Allah! who hast united snow and 
firo, unite all thy faithful servants in obedience to thy law.” 

“ This,” said Gabriel, “ is the guardian angel of heaven and 
earth. It is he who dispatches angels unto individuals of thy 
nation, to incline them in favor of thy mission, and call them 
to the service of God; and he will continue to do so until the 
day of resurrection.” 

Here was the prophet Musa (Moses), who, however, instead 
of welcoming Mahomet with joy, r s the other prophets had 
done, shed tears at sight of him. 

“Wherefore dost thou weep?”inquired Mahomet. “Because 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


77 


1 behold a successor who j* destined to conduct more of his 
nation into paradise than ever I could of the backsliding chil¬ 
dren of Israel.” 

Mounting hence to the seventh heaven, Mahomet was re¬ 
ceived by the patriarch Abraham. This blissful abode is 
formed of divine light, and of such transcendent glory that the 
tongue of man cannot describe it. One of its celestial inhabi¬ 
tants will suffice to give an idea of the rest. He surpassed the 
whole earth in magnitude, and had seventy thousand heads; 
each head seventy thousand mouths; each mouth seventy 
thousand tongues; each tongue spoke seventy thousand differ¬ 
ent languages, and all these were incessantly employed in 
chanting the praises of the Most High. 

While contemplating this wonderful being Mahomet was 
suddenly transported aloft to the lotus-tree, called Sedrat, 
which flourishes on the right hand of the invisible throne of 
Allah. The branches of this tree extend wider than the dis¬ 
tance between the sun and the earth. Angels more numerous 
than the sands of the sea-shore, or of the beds of all the 
streams and rivers, rejoice beneath its shade. The leaves re¬ 
semble the ears of an elephant; thousands of immortal birds 
sport among its brances, repeating the sublime verses of the 
Koran. Its fruits are milder than milk and sweeter than 
honey. If all the creatures of God were assembled, one of 
these fruits would be sufficient for their sustenance. Each 
seed encloses a houri, or celestial virgin, provided for the feli¬ 
city of true believers. From this tree issue four rivers; two 
flow into the interior of paradise, two issue beyond it, and 
become the Nile and Euphrates. 

Mahomet and his celestial guide now proceeded to A1 Mamour, 
or the House of Adoration, formed of red jacinths or rubies, 
and surrounded by innumerable lamps, perpetually burning. 
As Mahomet entered the portal, three vases were offered him, 
one containing wine, another milk, and the third honey. He 
took and drank of the vase containing milk. 

‘‘Wellhast thou done; auspicious is thy choice,” exclaimed 
Gabriel. “Hadst thou drunk of the wine, thy people had all 
gone astray.” 

The sacred house resembles in form the Caaba at Mecca, and 
is perpendicularly above it in the seventh heaven. It is visited 
every day by seventy thousand angels of the highest order. 
They were at this very time making their holy circuit, and 
Mahomet, joining with them, walked round it seven times. 


78 


MAHOMET AND I1IS SUCCESSORS. 


Gabriel could go no farther. Mahomet now traversed, quicker 
than thought, an immense space; passing through two regions 
of dazzling light, and one of profound darkness. Emerging 
from This utter gloom, he was filled with awe and terror at 
finding himself in the presence of Allah, and but two bow¬ 
shots from his throne. The face of the Deity was covered 
with twenty thousand veils, for it would have annihilated man 
to look upon its glory. He put forth his hands, and placed one 
upon the breast and the other upon the shoulder of Mahomet, 
who felt a freezing chill penetrate to his heart and to the very 
marrow of his bones. It was followed by a feeling of ecstatic 
bliss, while a sweetness and fragrance prevailed around, which 
none can understand but those who have been in the divine 
presence. 

Mahomet now received from the Deity himself, many of the 
doctrines contained in the Koran; and fifty prayers were pre¬ 
scribed as the daily duty of all true believers. 

When he descended from the divine presence and again met 
with Moses, the latter demanded what Allah had required. 
“ That I should make fifty prayers every day.” 

‘ 1 And thinkest thou to accomplish such a task? I have made 
the experiment before thee. I tried it with the children of 
Israel, but in vain; return, then, and beg a diminution of the 
task.” 

Mahomet returned accordingly, and obtained a diminution 
of ten prayers; but when he related his success to Moses, the 
latter made the same objection to the daily amount of forty. 
By his advice Mahomet returned repeatedly, until the number 
was reduced to five. 

Moses still objected. “Thinkest thou to exact five prayers 
daily from thy people? By Allah! I have had experience with 
the children of Israel, and such a demand is vain; return, there¬ 
fore, and entreat still further mitigation of the task.” 

“ No,” replied Mahomet, “I have already asked indulgence 
until I am ashamed.” With these words he saluted Moses and 
departed. 

By the ladder of light he descended to the temple of Jerusa¬ 
lem, where he found Borak fastened as he had left her, and 
mounting, was borne back in an instant to the place whence 
he had first been taken. 

This account of the vision, or nocturnal journey, is chiefly 
according to the words of the historians Abulfeda, A1 Bokhari, 
and Abu Horeira, and is given more at large in the Life of Ma- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


7^ 

hornet by Gagnier. The journey itself has given rise to endless 
commentaries and disputes among the doctors. Some affirm 
that it was no more than a dream or vision of the night, and 
support their assertion by a tradition derived from Ayesha, the 
wife of Mahomet, who declared that, on the night in question, 
his body remained perfectly still, and it was only in spirit that 
he made his nocturnal journey. In giving this tradition, how¬ 
ever, they did not consider that at the time the journey wa? 
said to have taken place, Ayesha was still a child, and, though 
espoused, had not become the wife of Mahomet. 

Others insist that he made the celestial journey bodily, and 
that the whole was miraculously effected in so short a space of 
time, that, on his return, he was able to prevent the complete 
overturn of a vase of water which the angel Gabriel had struck 
with his wing on his departure. 

Others say that Mahomet only pretended to have made the 
nocturnal journey to the temple of Jerusalem, and that the 
subsequent ascent to heaven was a vision. According to Ah¬ 
med ben Joseph, the nocturnal visit to the temple was testified 
by the patriarch of Jerusalem himself. “At the time,” says 
he, “ that Mahomet sent an envoy to the emperor Heraclius, at 
Constantinople, inviting him to embrace Isiamism, the patri¬ 
arch was in the presence of the emperor. The envoy having 
related the nocturnal journey of the prophet, the patriarch 
was seized with astonishment, and informed the emperor of a 
circumstance coinciding with the narrative of the envoy. ‘ It 
is my custom,’ said he, ‘ never to retire to rest at night until I 
have fastened every door of the temple. On the night here 
mentioned, I closed them according to my custom, but there 
was one which it was impossible to move. Upon this, I sent 
for the carpenters, who, having inspected the door, declared 
that the lintel over the portal, and the edifice itself, had settled 
to such a degree that it was out of their power to close the 
door. I was obliged, therefore, to leave it open. Early in the 
morning at the break of day I repaired thither, and behold, 
the stone placed at the corner of the temple was perforated, 
and there were vestiges of the place where A1 Borak had been 
fastened. Then, said I, to those present, this portal would not 
have remained fixed unless some prophet had been here to 
pray.’ ” 

Traditions go on to say that when Mahomet narrated his 
nocturnal journey to a large assembly in Mecca, many mar¬ 
velled yet believed, some were perplexed with douht, but the 


80 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Koreishites laughed it to scorn. “ Thou sayest that thou hast 
been to the temple of Jerusalem,” said Abu Jahl; “ prove the 
truth of thy words by giving a description of it.” 

For a moment Mahomet was embarrassed by the demand, 
for he had visited the temple in the night, when its form was 
not discernible; suddenly, however, the angel Gabriel stood by 
his side, and placed before his eyes an exact type of the sacred 
edifice, so that he was enabled instantly to answer the most 
minute questions. 

The story still transcended the belief even of some of his 
disciples, until Abu Beker, seeing them wavering in their faith, 
and in danger of backsliding, roundly vouched for the truth of 
it; in reward for which support, Mahomet gave him the title of 
AT Seddek, or the Testifier to the Truth, by which he was 
thenceforth distinguished. 

As we have already observed, this nocturnal journey rests 
almost entirely upon tradition, though some of its circum¬ 
stances are vaguely alluded to in the Koran. The whole may 
be a fanciful superstructure of Moslem fanatics on one of 
those visions or ecstasies to which Mahomet was prone, and 
the relation of which caused him to be stigmatized by the 
Koreishites as a madman. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

MAHOMET MAKES CONVERTS OF PILGRIMS FROM MEDINA—DETER¬ 
MINES TO FLY TO THAT CITY—A PLOT TO SLAY HIM—HIS 
MIRACULOUS ESCAPE—HIS HEGIRA, OR FLIGHT—HIS RECEP¬ 
TION AT MEDINA. 

The fortunes of Mahomet we-re becoming darker and darker 
in his native place. Cadijah, his original benefactress, the 
devoted companion of his solitude and seclusion, the zealous 
believer in his doctrines, was in her grave; so also was Abu 
Taleb, once his faithful and efficient protector. Deprived of 
the sheltering influence of the latter, Mahomet had become, 
in a manner, an outlaw, in Mecca; obliged to conceal himself, 
and remain a burden on the hospitality of those whom his 
own doctrines had involved in persecution. If worldly 
advantage had been his object, how had it been attained? 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


81 

Upward of ten years had elapsed since first he announced his 
prophetic mission; ten long years of enmity, trouble, and 
misfortune. Still he persevered, and now, at a period of lifo 
when men seek to enjoy in repose the fruition of the past, 
rather than risk all in new schemes for the future, we find 
him, after having sacrificed ease, fortune, and friends, pre¬ 
pared to give up home and country also, rather than his 
religious creed. 

As soon as the privileged time of pilgrimage arrived, he 
emerged once more from his concealment, and mingled with 
the multitude assembled from all parts of Arabia. His 
earnest desire was to find some powerful tribe, or the inhabi¬ 
tants of some important city, capable and willing to receive 
him as a guest, and protect him in the enjoyment and propa¬ 
gation of his faith. 

His quest was for a time unsuccessful. Those who had 
come to worship at the Gaaba drew back from a man stigma¬ 
tized as an apostate; and the worldly-minded were unwilling 
to befriend one proscribed by the powerful of his native place. 

At length, as he was one day preaching on the hill A1 
Akaba, a little to the north of Mecca, he drew the attention of 
certain pilgrims from the city of Yathreb. This city, since 
called Medina, was about two hundred and seventy miles 
north of Mecca. Many of its inhabitants were Jews and 
heretical Christians. The pilgrims in question were pure 
Arabs of the ancient and powerful tribe of Khazradites, and 
in habits of friendly intercourse with the Keneedites and 
Naderites, two Jewish tribes inhabiting Mecca who claimed to 
be of the sacerdotal line of Aaron. The pilgrims had often 
heard their Jewish friends explain the mysteries of their faith, 
and talk of an expected Messiah. They were moved by the 
eloquence of Mahomet, and struck with the resemblance of 
his doctrines to those of the Jewish law; insomuch that when 
they heard him proclaim himself a prophet, sent by heaven to 
restore the ancient faith, they said, one to another, ‘ ‘ Surely 
this must be the promised Messiah of which we have been 
told.” The more they listened, the stronger became their 
persuasion of the fact, until in the end they avowed their 
conviction, and made a final profession of the faith. 

As the Khazradites belonged to one of the most powerful 
tribes of Yathreb, Mahomet sought to secure their protection, 
and proposed to accompany them on their return; but they 
informed him that they were at deadly feud with the Awsites, 


82 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


another powerful tribe of that city, and advised him to defer 
his coming until they should be at peace. He consented; but 
on the return home of the pilgrims, he sent with them Musab 
Ibn Omeir, one of the most learned and able of his disciples, 
with instructions to strengthen them in the faith, and to 
preach it to their townsmen. Thus were the seeds of Islam- 
ism first sown in the city of Medina. For a time they thrived 
but slowly. Musab was opposed by the idolaters, and his life 
threatened; but he persisted in his exertions, and gradually 
made converts among the principal inhabitants. Among 
these were Saad Ibn Maads, a prince or chief of the Awsites, 
and Osaid Ibn Hodheir, a man of great authority in the city. 
Numbers of the Moslems of Mecca also, driven away by 
persecution, took refuge in Medina, and aided in propagating 
the new faith among its inhabitants, until it found its way 
into almost every household. 

Feeling now assured of being able to give Mahomet an 
asylum in the city, upward of seventy of the converts of 
Medina, led by Musab Ibn Omeir, repaired to Mecca with the 
pilgrims in the holy month of the thirteenth year of ‘ ‘ the 
mission,” to invite him to take up his abode in their city. 
Mahomet gave them a midnight meeting on the hill A1 Akaba. 
His uncle A1 Abbas, who, like the deceased Abu Taleb, took 
an affectionate interest in his welfare, though no convert to 
his doctrines, accompanied him to this secret conference, 
which he feared might lead him into danger. He entreated 
the pilgrims from Medina not to entice his nephew to their 
city until more able to protect him: warning them that their 
open adoption of the new faith would bring all Arabia in arms 
against them. His warnings and entreaties were in vain: a 
solemn compact was made between the parties. Mahomet 
demanded that they should abjure idolatry, and worship the 
one true God openly and fearlessly. For himself he exacted 
obedience in weal and woe; and for the disciples who might 
accompany him, protection; even such as they would render 
to their own wives and children. On these terms he offered 
to bind himself to remain among them, to be the friend of 
their friends, the enemy of their enemies. “But, should we 
perish in your cause,” asked they, “what will be our reward?” 
“Paradise!” replied the prophet. 

The terms were accepted; the emissaries from Medina 
placed their hands in the hands of Mahomet, and swore to 
abide by the compact. The latter then singled out twelve 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


83 


from among them, whom he designated as his apostles; in 
imitation, it is supposed, of the example of our Saviour, Just 
then a voice was heard from the summit of the hill, denounc¬ 
ing them as apostates, and menacing them with punishment. 
The sound of this voice, heard in the darkness of the night, 
inspired temporary dismay. “It is the voice of the fiend 
Iblis,” said Mahomet scornfully; “he is the foe of God: fear 
him not.” It was probably the voice of some spy or eaves* 
dropper of the Koreishites; for the very next morning they 
manifested a knowledge of what had taken place in the night; 
and treated the new confederates with great harshness as they 
were departing from the city. 

It was this early accession to the faith, and this timely aid 
proffered and subsequently afforded to Mahomet and his dis¬ 
ciples, which procured for the Moslems of Medina the appella¬ 
tion of Ansarians, or auxiliaries, by which they were afterward 
distinguished. 

After the departure of the Ansarians, and the expiration of 
the holy month, the persecutions of the Moslems were resumed 
with increased virulence, insomuch that Mahomet, seeing a 
crisis was at hand, and being resolved to leave the city, 
advised his adherents generally to provide for their safety. For 
himself, he still lingered in Mecca with a few devoted followers. 

Abu Sofian, his implacable foe, was at this time governor of 
the city. He was both incensed and alarmed at the spreading 
growth of the new faith, and held a meeting of the chief of the 
Koreishites to devise some means of effectually putting a stop 
to it. Some advised that Mahomet should be banished the 
city; but it was objected that he might gain other tribes to his 
interest, or perhaps the people of Medina, and return at their 
head to take his revenge. Others proposed to wall him up in 
a dungeon, and supply him with food until he died; but it was 
surmised that his friends might effect his escape. All these 
objections were raised by a violent and pragmatical old man, 
a stranger from the province of Nedja, who, say the Moslem 
writers, was no other than the devil in disguise, breathing his 
malignant spirit into those present. At length it was declared 
by Abu Jahl, that the only effectual check on the growing evil 
was to put Mahomet to death. To this all agreed, and as a 
means of sharing the odium of the deed, and withstanding the 
vengeance it might awaken among the relatives of the victim, 
it was arranged that a member of each family should plunge 
his sword into the body of Mahomet. 


84 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


It is to this conspiracy that allusion is made in the eighth 
chapter of the Koran. “And call to mind how the unbelievers 
plotted against thee, that they might either detain thee in 
bonds, or put thee to death, or expel thee the city; but God 
laid a plot against them; and God is the best layer of plots.” 

In fact, by the time the murderers arrived before the dwell¬ 
ing of Mahomet, he was apprised of the impending danger. 
As usual, the warning is attributed to the angel Gabriel, but 
it is probable it was given by some Koreishite, less bloody- 
minded than his confederates. It came just in time to save 
Mahomet from the hands of his enemies. They paused at 
his door, but hesitated to enter. Looking through a crevice 
they beheld, as they thought, Mahomet wrapped in his green 
mantle, and lying asleep on his couch. They waited for a 
while, consulting whether to fall on him while sleeping, or 
wait until he should go forth. At length they burst open 
the door and rushed toward the couch. The sleeper started 
up: but, instead of Mahomet, Ali stood before them. Amazed 
and confounded, they demanded, “Where is Mahomet?” “I 
know not,” replied Ali sternly, and walked forth; nor did any 
one venture to molest him. Enraged at the escape of their 
victim, however, the Koreishites proclaimed a reward of a 
hundred camels to any one who should bring them Mahomet 
alive or dead. 

Divers accounts are given of the mode in which Mahomet, 
made his escape from the house after the faithful Ali had 
wrapped himself in his mantle and taken his place upon the 
couch. The most miraculous account is, that he opened the 
door silently, as the Koreishites stood before it, and, scatter¬ 
ing a handful of dust in the air, cast such blindness upon them 
that he walked through the midst of them without being per¬ 
ceived. This, it is added, is confirmed by the verse of the 30th 
chapter of the Koran: “We have thrown blindness upon them, 
that they shall not see.” 

The most probable account is, that he clambered over the 
wall in the rear of the house, by the help of a servant, who 
bent his back for him to step upon it.. 

He repaired immediately to the house of Abu Beker, and 
they arranged for instant flight. It was agreed that they 
should take refuge in a cave in Mount Thor, about an hour’s 
distance from Mecca, and wait there until they could proceed 
safely to Medina: and in the mean time the children of Abu 
Beker should secretly bring them food. They left Mecca while 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


S5 

it was yet dark, making their way on foot by the light of the 
stars, and the day dawned as they found themselves at the 
foot of Mount Thor. Scarce were they within the cave when 
they heard the sound of pursuit. Abu Beker, though a brave 
man, quaked with fear. “ Our pursuers,” said he, ‘‘are many, 
and we are but two.” “Nay,” replied Mahomet, “there is a 
third; God is with us!” And here the Moslem writers relate a 
miracle, dear to the minds of ail true believers. By the time, 
say they, that the Koreishites reached the mouth of the 
cavern, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it, in the spread¬ 
ing branches of which a pigeon had made its nest, and laid its 
eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When 
the Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they 
concluded that no one could recently have entered the cavern; 
so they turned away, and pursued their search in another 
direction. 

Whether protected by miracle or not, the fugitives remained 
for three days undiscovered in the cave, and Asama, the 
daughter of Abu Beker, brought them food in the dusk of the 
evenings. 

On the fourth day, when they presumed the ardor of pursuit 
had abated, the fugitives ventured forth, and set out for 
Medina, on camels which a servant of Aub Beker had brought 
in the night for them. Avoiding the main road usually taken 
by the caravans, they bent their course nearer to the coast of 
the Red Sea. They had not proceeded far, however, before 
they were overtaken by a troop of horse headed by Soraka Ibn 
Malec. Abu Beker was again dismayed by the number of 
their pursuers; but Mahomet repeated the assurance, “ Be not 
troubled; Allah is with us.” Soraka was a grim warrior, with 
shagged iron gray locks and naked sinewy arms rough with 
hair. As he overtook Mahomet, his horse reared and fell with 
him. His superstitious mind was struck with it as an evil 
sign. Mahomet perceived the state of his feelings, and by an 
eloquent appeal wrought upon him* to such a degree that 
Soraka, filled with awe, entreated his forgiveness, and turning 
back with his troop suffered him to proceed on his way un¬ 
molested. 

The fugitives continued their journey without further inter¬ 
ruption, until they arrived at Koba, a hill about two miles 
from Medina. It was a favorite resort of the inhabitants of 
the city, and a place to which they sent their sick and infirm, 
for the air was pure and salubrious. Hence, too, the city was 


80 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

supplied with fruit; the hill and its environs being covered 
with vineyards, and Avith groves of the date and lotus; Avith 
gardens producing citrons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, peaches, 
and apricots; and being irrigated with limpid streams. 

On arriving at this fruitful spot, A1 KasAva, the camel of 
Mahomet, crouched on her knees, and would go no further. 
The prophet interpreted it as a favorable sign, and determined 
to remain at Koba, and prepare for entering the city. The 
place Avhere his camel knelt is still pointed out by pious Mos¬ 
lems, a mosque named A1 Takwa having been built there to 
commemorate the circumstance. Some affirm that it ay as 
actually founded by the prophet. A deep well is also shown in 
the vicinity, beside which Mahomet reposed under the shade 
of the trees, and into Avhich he dropped his seal ring. It is 
believed still to remain there, and has given sanctity to the 
well, the waters of which are conducted by subterraneous con¬ 
duits to Medina. At Koba he remained four days, residing in 
the house of an Awsite named Coithum Ibn Hadem. While 
at this village he Avas joined by a distinguished chief, Boreida 
Ibn Hoseib, Avith seventy followers, all of the tribe of Saham. 
These made profession of faith between the hands of Maho¬ 
met. 

Another renowned proselyte who repaired to the prophet at 
this village, Avas Salman al Parsi (or the Persian). He is said 
to have been a native of a small place near Ispahan, and that, 
on passing one day by a Christian church, he was so much 
struck by the devotion of the people, and the solemnity of the 
worship, that he became disgusted with the idolatrous faith in 
which he had been brought up. He afterward wandered about 
the east, from city to city, and convent to convent, in quest of 
a religion, until an ancient monk, full of years and infirmities, 
told him of a prophet who had arisen in Arabia to restore the 
pure faith of Abraham. 

This Salman rose to ppAver in after years, and Avas reputed 
by the unbelievers of Mecca to have assisted Mahomet in com¬ 
piling his doctrine. This is alluded to in the sixteenth chapter 
of the Koran: “Verily, the idolaters say, that a certain man 
assisted to compose the Koran; but the language of this man is 
Ajami (or Persian), and the Koran is indited in the pure Ara¬ 
bian tongue.” * 


* The renowned and learned Humphrey Prideaux, Doctor of Divinity and Dean 
of Norwich, in his Life of Mahomet, confounds this Salman the Persian with Ab- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


87 


The Moslems of Mecca, who had taken refuge some time be¬ 
fore in Medina, hearing that Mahomet was at hand, came forth 
to meet him at Koba; among these was the early convert 
Talha, and Zobeir, the nephew of Cadijah. These, seeing the 
travel-stained garments of Mahomet and Abu Beker, gave 
them white mantles, with which to make their entrance into 
Medina. Numbers of the Ansarians, or auxiliaries, of Medina, 
who had made their compact with Mahomet in the preceding 
year, now hastened to renew their vow of fidelity. 

Learning from them that the number of proselytes in the 
city was rapidly augmenting, and that there was a general dis¬ 
position to receive him favorably, he appointed Friday, the 
Moslem sabbath, the sixteenth day of the month Babi, for his 
public entrance. 

Accordingly on the morning of that day he assembled all 
his followers to prayer; and after a sermon, in which he ex¬ 
pounded the main principles of his faith, he mounted his 
camel A1 Kaswa, and set forth for that city, which was to be¬ 
come renowned in after ages as his city of refuge. 

Boreida Ibn al Hoseib, with his seventy horsemen of the 
tribe of Saham, accompanied him as a guard. Some of the dis¬ 
ciples took turns to hold a canopy of palm-leaves over his head, 
and by his side rode Abu Beker. “ Oh apostle of God!” cried 
Boreida, “thoushalt not enter Medina without a standard;” 
so saying, he unfolded his turban, and tying one end of it to 
the point of his lance, bore it aloft before the prophet. 

The city of Medina was fair to approach, being extolled for 
beauty of situation, salubrity of climate, and fertility of soil; 
for the luxuriance of its palm-trees, and the fragrance of its 
shrubs and flowers. At a short distance from the city a crowd 
of new proselytes to the faith came forth in sun and dust to 
meet the cavalcade. Most of them had never seen Mahomet, 
and paid reverence to Abu Beker through mistake; but the 
latter put aside the screen of palm-leaves, and pointed out 
the real object of homage, who was greeted with loud accla¬ 
mations. 

In this way did Mahomet., so recently a fugitive from his 
native city, with a price upon his head, enter Medina, more as 
a conqueror in triumph, than an exile seeking an asylum. He 


dallah Ibn Salan, a learned Jew; by some called Abdias Ben Salan in the Hebrew 
dialect, and by others Abdallah Salen; who is accused by Christian writers of 
assisting Mahomet in fabricating his revelations. 




88 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


alighted at the house of a Khazradite, named Abu Ayuo, a 
devout Moslem, to whom moreover he was distantly related; 
here he was hospitably received, and took up his abode in the 
basement story. 

Shortly after his arrival he was joined by the faithful Ah, 
who had fled from Mecca, and journeyed on foot, hiding him¬ 
self in the day and travelling only at night, lest he should fall 
into the hands of the Koreishites. He arrived weary and way¬ 
worn, his feet bleeding with the roughness of the journey. 

Within a few days more came Ayesha, and the rest of Abu 
Beker’s household, together with the family of Mahomet, con 
ducted by his faithful freedman Zeid, and by Abu Beker’s ser¬ 
vant Abdallah. 

Such is the story of the memorable Hegira, or “ Flight of the 
prophet”—the era of the Arabian kalendar, from which time 
is calculated by all true Moslems: it corresponds to the G22d 
year of the Christian era. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

MOSLEMS IN MEDINA, MOHADJERINS AND ANSARIANS—THE PARTY 
OF ABDALLAH IBN OBBA AND THE HYPOCRITES—MAHOMET 
BUILDS A MOSQUE, PREACHES, MAKES CONVERTS AMONG THE 
CHRISTIANS—THE JEWS SLOW TO BELIEVE—BROTHERHOOD 
ESTABLISHED BETWEEN FUGITIVES AND ALLIES. 

Mahomet soon found himself at the head of a numerous and 
powerful sect in Medina; partly made up of those of his disciples 
who had fled from Mecca, and were thence called Mohadjerins 
or. Fugitives, and partly of inhabitants of the place, who on 
joining the faith were called Ansarians or Auxiliaries. Most of 
these latter were of the powerful tribes of the Awsites and 
Khazradites, which, though descended from two brothers, A1 
Aavs and A1 Khazraj, had for a hundred and twenty years dis¬ 
tracted Medina by their inveterate and mortal feuds, but had 
now become united in the bonds of faith. With such of these 
tribes as did not immediately adopt his doctrines he made a 
covenant. 

The Khazradites were very much under the sway of a 
prince or chief, named Abdallah Ibn Obba; who, it is said, 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


89 


was on the point of being made king, when the arrival of Ma* 
hornet and the excitement caused by his doctrines gave the 
popular feeling a new direction. Abdallah was stately in per¬ 
son, of a graceful demeanor, and ready and eloquent tongue; 
he professed great friendship for Mahomet, and with several 
companions of his own type and character, used to attend the 
meetings of the Moslems. Mahomet was captivated at first by 
their personal appearance, their plausible conversation, and 
their apparent deference; but he found in the end that Abdal¬ 
lah was jealous of his popularity and cherished secret animos¬ 
ity against him, and that his companions were equally false in 
their pretended friendship; hence, he stamped them with the 
name of “The Hypocrites.” Abdallah Ibn Obba long con¬ 
tinued his political rival in Medina. 

Being now enabled publicly to exercise his faith and preach 
his doctrines, Mahomet proceeded to erect a mosque. The 
place chosen was a grave-yard or burying-ground, shaded by 
date-trees. He is said to have been guided in his choice by 
what he considered a favorable omen; his camel having knelt 
opposite to this place on his public entry into the city. The 
dead were removed, and the trees cut down to make way for 
the intended edifice. It was simple in form and structure, 
suited to the unostentatious religion which he professed, and 
to the scanty and precarious means of its votaries. The walls 
were of earth and brick; the trunks of the palm-trees recently 
felled, served as pillars to support the roof, which was framed 
of their branches and thatched with their leaves. It was about 
a hundred ells square, and had three doors; one to the south, 
where the Kebla was afterward established, another called the 
gate of Gabriel, and the third the gate of Mercy. A part of 
the edifice, called Soffat, was assigned as a habitation to such 
of the believers as were without a home. 

Mahomet assisted with his own hands in the construction of 
this mosque. With all his foreknowledge, he little thought 
that he was building his own tomb and monument; for in that 
edifice his remains are deposited. It has in after times been 
repeatedly enlarged and beautified, but still bears the name 
Mesjed al Nebi (the Mosque of the Prophet), from having been 
founded by his hands. He was for some time at a loss in what 
manner his followers should be summoned to their devotions; 
whether with the sound of trumpets as among the Jews, or by 
lighting fires on high places, or by the striking of timbrels. 
While in this perplexity a form of words to be cried aloud was 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


80 

suggested by Abdallah, the son of Zeid. who declared that it 
was revealed to him in a vision. It was instantly adopted by 
Mahomet, and such is given as the origin of the following sum¬ 
mons, which is to this day heard from the lofty minarets 
throughout the East, calling the Moslems to the place of wor 
ship: “ God is great! God is great! There.is no God but God. 
Mahomet is the apostle of God. Come to prayers! come to 
prayers! God is great! God is great! There is no God but 
God.” To which at dawn of day is added the exhortation, 
“Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than sleep!” 

Everything in this humble mosque was at first conducted 
with great simplicity. At night it was lighted up by splinters 
of the date-tree; and it was some time before lamps and oil 
were introduced. The prophet stood on the ground and 
preached, leaning with his back against the trunk of one of 
the date-trees, which served as pillars. He afterward had a 
pulpit or tribune erected, to which he ascended by three steps, 
so as to be elevated above the congregation. Tradition asserts, 
that when he first ascended this pulpit, the deserted date-tree 
uttered a groan; w T hereupon, as a consolation, he gave it the 
choice either to be transplanted to a garden again to flourish, 
or to be transferred to paradise, there to yield fruit, in after 
life, to true believers. The date-tree wisely chose the latter, 
and was subsequently buried beneath the pulpit, there to await 
its blissful resurrection. 

Mahomet preached and prayed in the pulpit, sometimes 
sitting, sometimes standing and leaning on a staff. His pre¬ 
cepts as yet were all peaceful and benignant, inculcating devo¬ 
tion to God and humanity to man. He seems to have emu¬ 
lated for a time the benignity of the Christian faith. “He 
who is not affectionate to God’s creatures, and to his own 
children,” would he say, “ God will not be affectionate to him. 
Every Moslem who clothes the naked of his faith, will be 
clothed by Allah in the green robes of paradise. ” 

In one of his traditional sermons, transmitted by his dis¬ 
ciples, is the following apologue on the subject of charity: 
“When God created the earth it shook and trembled, until he 
put mountains upon it, to make it firm. Then the angels 
asked, ‘Oh, God, is there anything of thy creation stronger 
than these mountains?’ And God replied, ‘Iron is stronger 
than the mountains; for it breaks them.’ ‘ And is there any¬ 
thing of thy creation stronger than iron?’ ‘Yes; fire is 
Stronger than iron, for it melts it.’ ‘ Is there anything of thy 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


91 


creation stronger than fire?’ ‘Yes; water, for it quenches 
fire.’ ‘Oh Lord, is there anything of thy creation stronger 
than water?’ - ‘Yes, wind; for it overcomes water and puts it 
in motion.’ ‘ Oh, our Sustainer! is there anything of thy crea¬ 
tion stronger than wind?’ ‘Yes, a good man giving alms; if 
he give with his right hand and conceal it from his left, he 
overcomes all things.’ ” 

His definition of charity embraced the wide circle of kind¬ 
ness. Every good act, he would say, is charity. Your smiling 
in your brother’s face is charity; an exhortation of your fel¬ 
low-man to virtuous deeds is equal to alms-giving; your put¬ 
ting a wanderer in the right road is charity; your assisting the 
blind is charity; your removing stones and thorns and other 
obstructions from the road is charity; your giving water to 
the thirsty is charity. 

“ A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good he does in this 
world to his fellow-man. When he dies, people will say, What 
property has he left behind him? But the angels, who examine 
him in the grave, will ask, ‘ What good deeds hast thou sent 
before thee? ’ ” 

“Oh prophet!” said one of his disciples, “my mother, Omm- 
Sad, is dead; what is the best alms I can send for the good of 
her soul?” “Water!” replied Mahomet, bethinking himself of 
the panting heats of the desert. ‘ ‘ Dig a well for her, and give 
water to the thirsty.” The man digged a well in his mother’s 
name, and said, “This well is for my mother, that its rewards 
may reach her soul.” 

Charity of the tongue also, that most important and least 
cultivated of charities, was likewise earnestly inculcated by 
Mahomet. Abu Jaraiya, an inhabitant of Basrah, coming to 
Medina, and being persuaded of the apostolical office of Ma¬ 
homet, entreated him some great rule of conduct. “Speak 
evil of no one,” answered the prophet. “From that time,” 
says Abu Jaraiya, “ I never did abuse any one, whether free¬ 
man or slave.” 

The rules of Islamism extended to the courtesies of life. 
Make a salam (or salutation) to a house on entering and leav¬ 
ing it. Return the salute of friends and acquaintances, and 
wayfarers on the road. He who rides must be the first to 
make the salute to him who walks; he who walks to him who 
is sitting; a small party to a large party, and the young to the 
old. 

On the arrival of Mahomet at Medina, s^me of the Christians 


92 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


of the city promptly enrolled themselves among his followers; 
they were probably of those sectarians who held to the human 
nature of Christ, and found nothing repugnant in Islamism; 
which venerated Christ as the greatest among the prophets. 
The rest of the Christians resident there showed but little hos¬ 
tility to the new faith, considering it far better than the old 
idolatry. Indeed, the schisms and bitter dissensions among 
the Christians of the East had impaired their orthodoxy, 
weakened their zeal, and disposed them easily to be led away 
by new doctrines. 

The Jews, of which there were rich and powerful families in 
Medina and its vicinity, showed a less favorable disposition. 
With some of them Mahomet made covenants of peace, and 
trusted to gain them in time to accept him as their promised 
Messiah or prophet. Biassed, perhaps unconsciously, by such 
views, he had modelled many of his doctrines on the dogmas 
of their religion, and observed certain of their fasts and ordi¬ 
nances. He allowed such as embraced Islamism to continue in 
the observance of their Sabbath, and of several of the Mosaic 
laws and ceremonies. It was the custom of the different relig¬ 
ions of the East, to have each a Kebla or sacred point toward 
which they turned their faces in the act of adoration; the Sa- 
beans toward the north star; the Persian fire-worshippers 
toward the east, the place of the rising sun; the Jews toward 
their holy city of Jerusalem. Hitherto Mahomet had pre¬ 
scribed nothing of the kind; but now, out of deference to the 
Jews, he made Jerusalem the Kebla, toward which all Moslems 
were to turn their faces when in prayer. 

While new converts were daily made among the inhabi¬ 
tants of Medina, sickness and discontent began to prevail 
among the fugitives from Mecca. They were not accustomed 
to the climate; many suffered from fevers, and in their sick¬ 
ness and debility languished after the home whence they ^vere 
exiled. 

To give them a new home, and link them closely with their 
new friends and allies, Mahomet established a brotherhood be¬ 
tween fifty-four of them and as many of the inhabitants of 
Medina. Two persons thus linked together were pledged to 
stand by each other in weal and woe; it was a tie, which knit 
their interests more closely even than that of kindred, for they 
were to be heirs to each other in preference to blood relations. 

This institution was one of expediency, and lasted only until 
the new comers had taken firm root in Medina; extended 


MAHOMET AND HIS SDCOESSOBS. 


93 


merely to those of the people of Mecca who had fled from per¬ 
secution ; and is alluded to in the following verse of the eighth 
chapter of the Koran: ‘ ‘ They who have believed and have fled 
their country, and employed their substance and their persons 
in fighting for the faith, and they who have given the prophet 
a refuge among them, and have assisted him, these shall be 
deemed the one nearest of kin to the other.” 

In this shrewd but simple way were laid the foundations of 
that power which was soon to attain stupendous strength, and 
to shake the mightiest empires of the world. 


CHAPTER XV. 

MARRIAGE OF MAHOMET WITH AYESHA—OF HIS DAUGHTER 
FATIMA WITH ALI—THEIR HOUSEHOLD ARRANGEMENTS. 

The family relations of Mahomet had been much broken up 
by the hostility brought upon him by his religious zeal. His 
daughter Rokaia was still an exile with her husband, Othman 
Ibn Affan, in Abyssinia; his daughter Zeinab had remained in 
Mecca with her husband, Abul Aass, who was a stubborn 
opposer of the new faith. The family with Mahomet in Medina 
consisted of his recently wedded wife Sawda, and Fatima, and 
Cm Colthum, daughters of his late wife Cadijah. He had a 
heart prone to affection, and subject to female influence, but 
he had never entertained much love for Sawda; and though he 
always treated her with kindness, he felt the want of some one 
to supply the place of his deceased wife Cadijah. 

“ Oh Omar,” said he one day, “ the best of man’s treasures is 
a virtuous woman, who acts by God’s orders, and is obedient 
and pleasing to her husband: he regards her personal and 
mental beauties with delight; when he orders her to do any¬ 
thing she obeys him; and when he is absent she guards his right 
in property in honor.” 

He now turned his eyes upon his betrothed spouse Ayesha, 
the beautiful daughter of Abu Beker. Two years had elapsed 
since they were betrothed, and she had now attained her ninth 
year; an infantine age, it would seem, though the female form 
is wonderfully precocious in the quickening climates of the 
East. Their nuptials took place a- few months after their 
arrival in Medina, and were celebrated with great simplicity; 



94 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the wedding supper was of milk, and the dowry of the bride 
was twelve okk of silver. 

The betrothing of Fatima, his youngest daughter, with his 
loyal disciple Ali, followed shortly after, and their marriage at 
a somewhat later period. Fatima was-between fifteen and six¬ 
teen years of age, of great beauty, and extolled by Arabian 
writers as one of the four perfect women with whom Allah has 
deigned to bless the earth. The age of Ali was about twenty- 
two. 

Heaven and earth, say the Moslem writers, joined in paying 
honor to these happy espousals. Medina resounded with fes¬ 
tivity, and blazed with illuminations, and the atmosphere was 
laden with aromatic odors. As Mahomet, on the nuptial night, 
conducted his daughter to her bridegroom, heaven sent down a 
celestial pomp to attend her: on her right hand was the arch¬ 
angel Gabriel, on her left was Michael, and she was followed 
by a train of seventy thousand angels, who all night kept 
watch round the mansion of the youthful pair. 

Such are the vaunting exaggerations with which Moslem 
writers are prone to overlay every event in the history of the 
prophet, and destroy the real grandeur of his career, which 
consists in its simplicity. A more reliable account states that 
the wedding feast was of dates and olives; that the nuptial 
couch was a sheep-skin; that the portion of the bride consisted 
of two skirts, one head-tire, two silver armlets, one leathern 
pillow stuffed with palm-leaves, one beaker or drinking cup, 
one hand-mill, two large jars for water, and one pitcher. All 
this was in unison with the simplicity of Arab housekeeping, 
and with the circumstances of the married couple; and to 
raise the dowry required of him, Ali, it is said, had to sell 
several camels and some shirts of mail. 

The style of living of the prophet himself was not superior to 
that of his disciple. Ayesha, speaking of it in after years, ob¬ 
served: “Forawfiole month together we did not fight a fire 
to dress victuals; our food was nothing but dates and water, 
unless any one sent us meat. The people of the prophet’s 
household never got wheat bread two successive days.” 

His food, in general, was dates and barley-bread, with milk 
and honey. He swept his chamber, lit his fire, mended his 
clothes, and was, in fact, his own servant. For each of his 
two wives he provided a separate house adjoining the mosque. 
He resided with them by turns, but Ayesha ever remained his 
favorite. 


MAHOMET AHD HIS SUCCESSORS. 95 

Mahomet has been extolled by Moslem writers for the chas- 
tity of his early life; and it is remarkable that, with all the 
plurality of wives indulged in by the Arabs, and which he per¬ 
mitted himself in subsequent years, and with all that constitu¬ 
tional fondness which he evinced for the sex, he remained sin¬ 
gle in his devotion to Cadij ah to her dying day, never giving 
her a rival in his house nor in his heart. Even the fresh and 
budding charms of Ayeska, which soon assumed such empire 
over him, could not obliterate the deep and mingled feeling of 
tenderness and gratitude for his early benefactress. Ayeslia 
was piqued one day at hearing him indulge in these fond recol¬ 
lections: “Oh apostle of God, v demanded the youthful beauty, 
“was not Cadijah stricken in years? Has not Allah given 
thee a better wife in her stead?” 

“Never !” exclaimed Mahomet, with an honest burst of feel¬ 
ing— ‘ ‘ never did God give me a better 1 When I was poor, she 
enriched me; when I was pronounced a liar, she believed in 
me; when I was opposed by all the world, she remained true 
to me!” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE SWORD ANNOUNCED AS THE INSTRUMENT OF FAITH—FIRST 
FORAY AGAINST THE KOREISHITES—SURPRISAL OF A CARAVAN. 

We come now to an important era in the career of Mahomet. 
Hitherto he had relied on argument and persuasion to make 
proselytes, enjoining the same on his disciples. His exhorta¬ 
tions to them to bear with patience and long-suffering the vio¬ 
lence of their enemies, almost emulated the meek precept of 
our Saviour, “if they smite thee on the ope cheek, turn to 
them the other also.” He now arrived at a point where he 
completely diverged from the celestial spirit of the Christian 
doctrines, and stamped his religion with the alloy of fallible 
mortality. His human nature was not capable of maintaining 
the sublime forbearance he had hitherto inculcated. Thirteen 
years of meek endurance had been rewarded by nothing but 
aggravated injury and insult. His greatest persecutors had 
been those of his own tribe, the Koreishites, especially those 
of the rival line of Abd Schems, whose vindictive chief, Abu 
Sofian. had now the sway of Mecca. By their virulent hos- 



96 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


tility his fortunes had been blasted; his family degraded, inr 
poverished, and dispersed, and he himself driven into exile. 
All this he might have continued to bear with involuntary 
meekness, had not the means of retaliation unexpectedly 
sprung up within his reach. He had come to Medina a fugi¬ 
tive seeking an asylum, and craving merely a quiet home. 
In a little while, and probably to his own surprise, he found 
an army at his command: for among the many converts daily 
made in Medina, the fugitives flocking to him from Mecca, and 
proselytes from the tribes of the desert, were men of resolute 
spirit, skilled in the use of arms, and fond of partisan warfare. 
Human passions and mortal resentments were awakened by 
this sudden accession of power. They mingled with that zeal 
for religious reform, which was still his predominant motive. 
In the exaltations of his enthusiastic spirit he endeavored to 
persuade himself, and perhaps did so effectually, that the 
power thus placed within his reach was intended as a means 
of effecting his great purpose, and that he was called upon by 
divine command to use it. Such at least is the purport of the 
memorable manifesto which he issued at this epoch, and which 
changed the whole tone and fortunes of his faith. 

“Different prophets,” said he, “have been sent by God to 
illustrate his different attributes: Moses his clemency and 
providence; Solomon his wisdom, majesty, and glory; Jesus 
Christ his righteousness, omniscience, and power—his righte¬ 
ousness by purity of conduct; his omniscience by the knowl¬ 
edge he displayed of the secrets of all hearts; his power by the 
miracles he wrought. None of these attributes, however, have 
been sufficient to enforce conviction, and even the miracles of 
Moses and Jesus have been treated with unbelief. I, therefore, 
the last of the prophets, am sent with the sword! Let those 
who promulgate my faith enter into no argument nor discus¬ 
sion, but slay all who refuse obedience to the law. Whoever 
fights for the true faith, whether he fall or conquer, will as¬ 
suredly receive a glorious reward ’* 

“The sword,” added he, “is the Key of heaven and hell; all 
who draw it in the cause of the faith will be rewarded with 
temporal advantages; every drop shed of their blood, every 
peril and hardship endured by them, will be registered on high 
as more meritorious than even fasting or praying. If they fall 
in battle their sins will at once be blotted out, and they will be 
transported to paradise, there to revel in eternal pleasures in 
the arms of black-eyed houris ” 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS .. 


97 


Predestination was brought to aid these belligerent doctrines. 
Every event, according to the Koran, was predestined from 
eternity, and could not be avoided. No man could die sooner 
or later than his allotted hour, and when it arrived it would be 
the same, whether the angel of death should find him in the 
quiet of his bed, or amid the storm of battle. 

Such were the doctrines and revelations which converted 
Islamism of a sudden from a religion of meekness and philan¬ 
thropy, to one of violence and the sword. They were pecu¬ 
liarly acceptable to the Arabs, harmonizing with their habits, 
and encouraging their predatory propensities. Virtually pi¬ 
rates of the desert, it is not to be wondered at that, after this 
open promulgation of the Religion of the Sword, they should 
flock in crowds to the standard of the prophet. Still no vio¬ 
lence was authorized by Mahomet against those who should 
persist in unbelief, provided they should readily submit to his 
temporal sway, and agree to pay tribute; and here we see the 
first indication of worldly ambition and a desire for temporal 
dominion dawning upon his mind. Still it will be found that 
the tribute thus exacted was subsidiary to his ruling passion, 
and mainly expended by him in the extension' of the faith. 

The first warlike enterprises of Mahomet betray the lurking 
resentment we have noted. They were directed against the 
caravans of Mecca, belonging to his implacable enemies the 
Koreishites. The three first were headed by Mahomet in per¬ 
son, but without any material result. The fourth was con¬ 
fided to a Moslem, named Abdallah Ibn Jasch; who was sent 
out with eight or ten resolute followers on the road toward 
South Arabia. As it was now the holy month of Radjab, 
sacred from violence and rapine, Abdallah had sealed orders, 
not to be opened until the third day. These orders were 
vaguely yet significantly worded. Abdallah was to repair to 
the valley of Naklah, between Mecca and Tayef (the same in 
which Mahomet had the revelation of the Genii), where he 
was to watch for an expected caravan of the Koreishites. 
“Perhaps,” added the letter of instructions, shrewdly—“per¬ 
haps thou mayest be able to bring us some tidings of it.” 

Abdallah understood the true meaning of the letter, and 
acted up to it. Arriving in the valley of Naklah, he descried 
the caravan, consisting of several camels laden with merchan¬ 
dise, and conducted by four men. Following it at a distance, 
he sent one of his men, disguised as a pilgrim, to overtake it. 
From the words of the latter, the Koreishites supposed his 


98 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


companions to be like himself, pilgrims bound to Mecca. Be¬ 
sides, it was the month of Radjah, when the desert might be 
travelled in security. Scarce had they come to a halt, how¬ 
ever, when Abdallah and his comrades fell on them, killed one, 
and took two prisoners; the fourth escaped. The victors then 
returned to Medina with their prisoners and booty. 

All Medina was scandalized at this breach of the holy 
month. Mahomet, finding that he had ventured too far, pre¬ 
tended to be angry with Abdallah, and refused to take the 
share of the booty offered to him. Confiding in the vagueness 
of his instructions, he insisted that he had not commanded 
Abdallah to shed blood, or commit any violence during the 
holy month. 

The clamor still continuing, and being echoed by the Kore- 
ishites of Mecca, produced the following passage of the Koran: 

“ They will ask thee concerning the sacred month, whether 
Obey may make war therein. Answer: To war therein is 
grievous; but to deny God, to bar the path of God against his 
people, to drive true believers from his holy temple, and to 
worship idols, are sins far more grievous than to kill in the 
holy months/ 

Having thus proclaimed divine sanction for the deed, Maho¬ 
met no longer hesitated to take his share of the booty. He 
delivered one of the prisoners on ransom; the other embraced 
Islamism. 

* The above passage of the Koran, however satisfactory it 
may have been to devout Moslems, will scarcely serve to ex¬ 
culpate their prophet in the eyes of the profane. The expedi¬ 
tion of Abdallah Ibn Jasch was a sad practical illustration of 
the new religion of the sword. It contemplated not merely an 
act of plunder and revenge, a venial act in the eyes of Arabs, 
and justified by the new doctrines by being exercised against 
the enemies of the faith, but an outrage also on the holy 
month, that period sacred from time immemorial against vio¬ 
lence and bloodshed, and which Mahomet himself professed to 
hold in reverence. The craft and secrecy also with which the 
whole was devised and conducted, the sealed letter of instruc¬ 
tions to Abdallah, to be opened only at the end of three days, 
at the scene of projected outrage, and couched in language 
vague, equivocal, yet sufficiently significant to the agent—all 
were in direct opposition to the conduct of Mahomet in the 
earlier part of his career, when he dared openly to pursue the 
path of duty, “though the sun should be arrayed against him 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


99 


on the right hand, and the moon on the left;” all showed that 
he was conscious of the turpitude of the act he was authoriz¬ 
ing. His disavowal of the violence committed by Abdallah, 
yet his bringing the Koran to his aid to enable him to profit by 
it with impunity, give still darker shades to this transaction; 
which altogether shows how immediately and widely he went 
wrong the moment he departed from the benevolent spirit of 
Christianity, which he at first endeavored to emulate. World 
ly passions and worldly interests were fast getting the ascend¬ 
ency over that religious enthusiasm which first inspired him. 
As has well been observed, “the fi~ st drop of blood shed in his 
name in the Holy Week displayed him a man in whom the 
slime of earth had quenched the holy flame of prophecy.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE BATTLE OF BEDER. 

In the second year of the Hegira, Mahomet received intelli¬ 
gence that his arch foe, Abu Sofian, with a troop of thirty 
horsemen, was conducting back to Mecca a caravan of a thou¬ 
sand camels, laden with the merchandise of Syria. Their 
route lay through the country of Medina, between the range 
of mountains and the sea. Mahomet determined to intercept 
them. About the middle of the month Ramadhan, therefore, 
he sallied forth with three hundred and fourteen men, of 
whom eighty-three were Mohadjerins, or exiles from Mecca; 
sixty-one Awsites, and a hundred and seventy Khazradites. 
Each troop had its own banner. There were but two horses in 
this little army,* but there were seventy fleet camels, which 
the troop mounted by turns, so as to make a rapid march, 
1 without much fatigue. 

Othman Ibn Affan. the son-in-law of Mahomet, was now re¬ 
turned with his wife Rokaia from their exile in Abyssinia, and 


* “The Arabs of the desert,” says Burckbardt, “ are not rich in horses. Among 
the great tribes mi the Red Sea, between Akaba and Mecca, and to the south and 
south-east of Mecca, as far as Yemen, horses are very scarce, especially among 
those of the mountainous districts. The settled inhabitants of Hedjaz and Yemen 
are not much in the habit of keeping horses. The trines most rich in horses are 
those who dwell in the comparatively fertile plains of Mesopotamia, on the banks 
©f the river Euphrates, and on the Syrian plains.”— Burckhardt, ii. 50. 





100 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


would have joined the enterprise, but his wife was ill almost 
unto death, so that he was obliged reluctantly to remain in 
Medina. 

Mahomet for a while took the main road to Mecca, then 
leaving it to the left, turned toward the Red Sea and entered a 
fertile valley, watered by the brook Beder. Here he laid in 
wait near a ford, over which the caravans were accustomed to 
pass. He caused his men to dig a deep trench, and to divert 
the water therein, so that they might resort thither to slake 
their thirst, out of reach of the enemy. 

In the mean time Abu Sofian, having received early intel 
ligence that Mahomet had sallied forth to waylay him with a 
superior force, dispatched a messenger named Omair, on a fleet 
dromedary, to summon instant relief from Mecca. The mes¬ 
senger arrived at the Caaba haggard and breathless. Abu 
Jahl mounted the roof and sounded the alarm. All Mecca was 
in confusion and consternation. Ilenda, the wife of Abu Sofian, 
a woman of a fierce and intrepid nature, called upon her father 
Otha, her brother A1 Walid, her uncle Shaiba, and all the war¬ 
riors of her kindred, to arm and hasten to the relief of her hus¬ 
band. The brothers, too, of the Koreishite slain by Abdallah 
Ibn Jasch, in the valley of Naklah, seized their weapons to 
avenge his death. Motives of interest were mingled with 
eagerness for vengeance, for most of the Koreishites had pro¬ 
perty embarked in the caravan. In a little while a force of 
one hundred horse and seven hundred camels hurried forward 
on the road toward Syria. It was led by Abu Jahl, now three¬ 
score and ten years of age, a veteran warrior of the desert, who 
still retained the fire and almost the vigor and activity of 
youth, combined with the rancor of old age. 

While Abu Jahl, with his forces, was hurrying on in one 
direction, Abu Sofian-was approaching in another. On arriv¬ 
ing at the region of danger, he preceded his caravan a con¬ 
siderable distance, carefully regarding every track and foot¬ 
print. At length he came upon the track of the little army of 
Mahomet. He knew it from the size of the kernels of the 
dates, which the troops had thrown by the wayside as they 
marched—those of Medina being remarkable for their small¬ 
ness. On such minute signs do the Arabs depend in tracking 
their foes through the deserts. 

Observing the course Mahomet had taken, Abu Sofian 
changed his route, and passed along the coast of the Red Sea 
until he considered himself out of danger. He then sent an- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 10j 

other messenger to meet any Koreishites that might have sal 
lied forth, and to let them know that the caravan was safe 
and they might return to Mecca. 

The messenger met the Koreishites when in full march. On 
hearing that the caravan was safe, they came to a halt and 
- held council. Some were for pushing forward and inflicting a 
signal punishment on Mahomet and his followers ; others were 
for turning back. In this dilemma they sent a scout to recon¬ 
noitre the enemy. He brought back word that they were 
about three hundred strong; this increased the desire of those 
who were for battle. Others remonstrated. ‘ ‘ Consider, ” said 
they, ‘‘these are men who have nothing to lose; they have 
nothing but their swords; not one of them will fall without 
slaying his man. Besides, we have relatives among them; if 
we conquer, we will not be able to look each other in the face, 
having slain each other’s relatives.” These words were pro¬ 
ducing their effect, but the brothers of the Koreishite who had 
been slain in the valley of Naklah were instigated by Abu Jahl 
to cry for revenge. That fiery old Arab seconded their appeal. 
“Forward!” cried he; “let us get water from the brook Beder 
for the feast with which we shall make merry over the escape 
of our caravan.” The main body of the troops, therefore, 
elevated their standards and resumed their march, though a 
considerable number turned back to Mecca. 

The scouts of Mahomet brought him notice of the approach 
of this force. The hearts of some of his followers failed them; 
they had come forth in the expectation of little fighting and 
much plunder, and were dismayed at the thoughts of such an 
overwhelming host; but Mahomet bade them be of good cheer, 
for Allah had promised him an easy Victory. 

The Moslems posted themselves on a rising ground, with 
water at the foot of it. »A hut, or shelter of the branches of 
trees, had been hastily erected on the summit for Mahomet, 
and a dromedary stood before it, on which he might fly to 
Medina in case of defeat. 

The vanguard of the enemy entered the valley panting with 
thirst, and hastened to the stream for drink; but Ham^a, the 
uncle of Mahomet, set upon them with a number of his men 
and slew the leader with his own hand. Only one of the van 
guard escaped, who was afterward converted to the faith. 

The main body of the enemy now approached with sound 
of trumpet. Three Koreishite warriors advancing in front, 
defied the bravest of the Moslems to equal combat. Two of 


102 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


these challengers were Otha, the father-in-law of Abu Sofian, 
and A1 Walid, his brother-in daw. The third challenger was 
Shaiba, the brother of Otha. These it will be recollected had 
been instigated to sally forth from Mecca, by Henda, the wife 
of Abu Sofian. They were all men of rank in their tribe. 

Three warriors of Medina stepped forward and accepted 
their challenge; but they cried, “No! Let the renegades of 
our own city of Mecca advance, if they dare.” Upon this 
Hamza and Ali, the uncle and cousin of Mahomet, and Obeidah 
Ibn al Hareth, undertook the fight. After a fierce and obsti¬ 
nate contest, Hamza and Ali each slew his antagonist. They 
then went to the aid of Obeidah, who was severely wounded 
and nearly overcome by Otha. They slew the Koreishite and 
bore away their associate, but he presently died of his wounds. 

The battle now became general. The Moslems, aware of the 
inferiority of their number at first merely stood on the defen¬ 
sive, maintaining their position on the rising ground, and gall¬ 
ing the enemy with flights of arrows whenever they sought to 
slake their intolerable thirst at the stream below. Mahomet 
remained in his hut on the hill, accompanied by Abu Beker, 
and earnestly engaged in prayer. In the course of the battle 
he had a paroxysm, or fell into a kind of trance. Coming to 
himself, he declared that God in a vision had promised him 
the victory. Rushing out of the hut, he caught up a handful 
of dust and cast it into the air toward the Koreishites, exclaim¬ 
ing, “ May confusion light upon their faces.” Then ordering 
his followers to charge down upon the enemy: ‘ ‘ Fight, and 
fear not,” cried he; “the gates of paradise are under the shade 
of swords. He will assuredly find instant admission who falls 
fighting for the faith.” 

In the shock of battle which ensued, Abu Jahl, who was 
urging his horse into* the thickest of the conflict, received a 
blow of a scimetar in the thigh which brought him to the 
ground. Abdallah Ibn Masoud put his foot upon his breast, 
and while the fiery veteran was still uttering imprecations and 
curses on Mahomet, severed his head from his body. 

The Koreishites now gave way and fled. Seventy remained 
dead on the field, and nearly the same number were taken 
prisoners. Fourteen Moslems were slain, whose names remain 
on record as martyrs to the faith. 

This signal victory was easily to be accounted for on natural 
principles; the Moslems being fresh and unwearied, and hav¬ 
ing the advantage of a rising ground, and a supply of water; 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


103 


while the Koreishites were fatigued by a hasty march, parched 
with thirst, and diminished in force, by the loss of numbers 
who had turned back to Mecca. Moslem writers, however, 
attribute this early triumph of the faith to supernatural 
agency. When Mahomet scattered dust in the air, say they, 
three thousand angelic warriors in white and yellow turbans, 
rend long dazzling robes, and mounted on black and white 
steeds, came rushing like a blast, and swept the Koreishites 
before them. Nor is this affirmed on Moslem testimony alone, 
but given on the word of an idolater, a peasant who was at' 
tending sheep on an adjacent hill. “ I was with a companion, 
a cousin,” said the peasant, “upon the fold of the mountain, 
watching the conflict, and waiting to join with the conquerors 
and share the spoil. Suddenly we beheld a great cloud sailing 
toward us, and within it were the neighing of steeds and bray¬ 
ing of trumpets. As it approached, squadrons of angels sallied 
forth, and we heard the terrific voice of the archangel as he 
urged his mare Haizum, ‘Speed! speed! oh Haizum!’ At 
which awful sound the heart of my companion burst with 
terror, and he died on the spot; and I had well nigh shared his 
fate.”* 

When the conflict was over, Abdallah Ibn Masoud brought 
the head of Abu Jahl to Mahomet, who eyed the grisly trophy 
with exultation, exclaiming, “This man was the Pharaoh of 
our nation.” The true name of this veteran warrior was Amru 
Ibn Hasham. The Koreishites had given him the name of 
Abu Thoem, or Father of Wisdom, on account of his sagacity. 
The Moslems had changed it to Abu Jahl, Father of Folly 
The latter appellation has adhered to him in history, and he is 
never mentioned by true believers without the ejaculation, 
“ May he be accursed of God!” 

The Moslems who had fallen in battle were honorably in¬ 
terred ; as to the bodies of the Koreishites, they were eontemp- 


* This miraculous aid is repeatedly mentioned in the Koran, e.g.: 

“ God had already given you the victory at Beder, when ye were inferior in num¬ 
ber. When thou saidst unto the faithful, Is it not enough for you that your Lord 
should assist you with three thousand angels, sent down from heaven? Verily, if 
ye persevere, and fear God, and your enemies come upon you suddenly, your 
Lord will assist you with five thousand angels, distinguished by their horses and 
attire. 


“ O true believers, ye slew not those who were slain at Beder yourselves, but God 
slew them. Neither didst thou, O Mahomet, cast the gravel into their eyes, when 
thou didst seem to cast it; but God cast it.”— Sale's 'Koran . chap. iii. 




104 


MAHOMET AND JIIS SUCCESSORS. 


tuously thrown into a pit which had been digged for them. 
The question was how to dispose of the prisoners. Omar was 
for striking off their heads; but Abu Beker advised that they 
should, be given up on ransom. Mahomet observed that Omar 
was like Noah, who prayed for the destruction of the guilty 
by the deluge; but Abu Beker was like Abraham, who inter¬ 
ceded for the guilty. He decided on the side of mercy. But 
two of the prisoners were put to death; one, named Nadhar, 
for having ridiculed the Koran as a collection of Persian tales 
and fables; the other, named Okba, for the attempt upon the 
life of Mahomet when he first preached in the Caaba, and 
when he was rescued by Abu Beker. Several of the prisoners 
who were poor were liberated on merely making oath never 
again to take up arms against Mahomet or his followers. The 
rest were detained until ransoms should be sent by their 
friends. 

Among the most important of the prisoners was A1 Abbas, 
the uncle of Mahomet. He had been captured by Abu Yaser, 
a man of small stature. As the bystanders scoffed at the dis¬ 
parity of size, A1 Abbas pretended that he really had surren¬ 
dered to a horseman of gigantic size, mounted on a steed the 
like of which he had never seen before. Abu Yaser would 
lave steadily maintained the truth of his capture, but Maho¬ 
met, willing to spare the humiliation of his uncle, intimated 
that the captor had been aided by the angel Gabriel. 

A1 Abbas would have excused himself from paying ransom, 
alleging that he was a Moslem in heart, and had only taken 
part in the battle on compulsion; but his excuse did not avail. 
It is thought by many that he really had a secret understand¬ 
ing with his nephew, and was employed by him as a spy in 
Mecca, both before and after the battle of Beder. 

Another prisoner of great importance to Mahomet was Abul 
Aass, the husband of his daughter Zeinab. The prophet would 
fain have drawn his son-in-law to him and enrolled him among 
his disciples, but Abul Aass remained stubborn in unbelief. 
Mahomet then offered to set him at liberty on condition of his 
returning to him his daughter. To this the infidel agreed, and 
Zeid, the faithful freedman of the prophet, was sent with sev¬ 
eral companions to Mecca, to bring Zeinab to Medina; in the 
mean time her husband, Abul Aass, remained a hostage for 
the fulfilment of the compact. 

Before the army returned to Medina there was a division of 
the spoil; for, though the caravan of Abu Sofian had escaped, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSOHS. 


105 


yet considerable booty of weapons and camels had been taken 
in the battle, and a large sum of money would accrue from the 
ransom of the prisoners. On this occasion Mahomet ordered 
that the whole should be equally divided among all the Mos¬ 
lems engaged in the enterprise; and though it was a long- 
established custom among the Arabs to give a fourth part of 
the booty to the chief, yet he contented himself with the same 
share as the rest. Among the spoil which fell to his lot was a 
famous sword of admirable temper, called Dhul Fakar, or the 
Piercer. He ever afterward bore it when in battle; and his 
son-in-law, Ali, inherited it at his death. 

This equal distribution of the booty caused great murmurs 
among the troops. Those who had borne the brunt of the 
fight, and had been most active in taking the spoil, complained 
that they had to share alike with those who had stood aloof 
from tbe affray, and with the old men who had remained to 
guard the camp. The dispute, observes Sale, resembles that 
of the soldiers of David in relation to spoils taken from the 
Amalekites; those who had been in the action insisting that 
they who tarried by the stuff should have no share of the spoil. 
The decision was the same—that they should share alike 
(1 Samuel 30: 21-25). Mahomet, from his knowledge of Bible 
history, may have been guided by this decision. The division 
of the spoils was an important point to settle, for a leader 
about to enter on a career of predatory warfare. Fortunately, 
he had a timely revelation shortly after his return to Mecca, 
regulating for the future the division of all booty gained in 
fighting for the faith. 

Such are the particulars of the famous battle of Beder, the 
first victory of the Saracens under the standard of Mahomet; 
inconsiderable, perhaps, in itself, but stupendous in its results; 
being the commencement of a career of victories which changed 
the destinies of the world. 


106 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

DEATH OF THE PROPHET’S DAUGHTER ROKAIA—RESTORATION 03 
HIS DAUGHTER ZEINAB—EFFECT OF THE PROPHET’S MALEDIC¬ 
TION ON ABU LAHAB AND HIS FAMILY—FRANTIC RAGE OF HEN- 
DA, THE WIFE OF ABU SOFIAN—MAHOMET NARROWLY ESCAPES 
ASSASSINATION—EMBASSY OF THE KOREISHITES—THE KING OF 
ABYSSINIA. 

Mahomet returned in triumph to Medina with the spoils and 
prisoners taken in his first battle. His exultation, however, 
was checked by domestic grief. Rokaia, his beloved daughter, 
so recently restored from exile, was no more. The messenger 
who preceded Mahomet with tidings of his victory met the 
funeral train at the gate of the city, bearing her body to the 
tomb. 

The affliction of the prophet was soothed shortly afterward 
by the arrival from Mecca of his daughter Zeinab, conducted 
by the faithful Zeid. The mission of Zeid had been attended 
with difficulties. The people of Mecca were exasperated by 
the late defeat, and the necessity of ransoming the prisoners. 
Zeid remained, therefore, without the walls, and sent in a 
message to Kenanah, the brother of Abul Aass, informing him 
of the compact, and appointing a place where Zeinab should 
be delivered into his hands. Kenanah set out to conduct her 
thither in a litter. On the way he was beset by a throng of 
Koreishites, determined to prevent the daughter of Mahomet 
from being restored to him. In the confusion one Habbar Ibn 
Aswad made a thrust at the litter with a lance, which, had not 
Kenanah parried it with his bow, might have proved fatal to 
Zeinab. Abu Sofian was attracted to the place by the noise 
and tumult, and rebuked Kenanah for restoring Mahomet’s 
daughter thus publicly, as it might be construed into a weak 
concession; Zeinab was taken back, therefore, to her home, 
and Kenanah delivered her up secretly to Zeid in the course 
of the following night. 

Mahomet was so exasperated at hearing of the attack on his 
daughter that he ordered whoever should take Habbar, to 
burn him alive. When his rage had subsided, he modified this 
command. “It is for God alone,” said he, “to punish man 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


107 

with fire. If taken, let Habbar be put to death with the 
sword.” 

The recent triumph of the Moslems at Beder struck the 
Koreishites of Mecca with astonishment and mortification. 
The man so recently driven a fugitive from their walls had 
suddenly started up a powerful foe. Several of their bravest 
and most important men had fallen beneath his sword; others 
were his captives, and awaited a humiliating ransom. Abu 
Lahab, the uncle of Mahomet, and always his vehement op- 
poser, had been unable, from illness, to take the field. He 
died a few days after hearing of the victory, his death being 
hastened by the exasperation of his spirits. Pious Moslems, 
however, attribute it to the curse pronounced by Mahomet 
aforetime on him and his family, when he raised his hand to 
hurl a stone at the prophet on the hill of Safa. That curse, 
say they, fell heavily also on his son Otho, who had repudiated 
the prophet’s daughter Rokaia; he was torn to pieces by a lion, 
in the presence of a whole caravan, when on a journey to 

Syria. 

By no one was the recent defeat at Beder felt so severely as 
by Abu Sofian. He reached Mecca in safety with his caravan, 
it is true; but it was to hear of the triumph of the man he 
detested, and to find his home desolate. His wife Henda met 
him with frantic lamentations for the death of her father, her 
uncle, and her brother. Rage mingled with her grief, and she 
cried night and day for vengeance on Hamza and Ali, by 
whose hands they had fallen.* 

Abu Sofian summoned two hundred fleet horsemen, each 
with a sack of meal at his saddle-bow, the scanty provisions of 
an Arab for a foray; as he sallied forth he vowed neither to 
anoint his head, perfume his beard, nor approach a female, 
until he had met Mahomet face to face. Scouring the country 


* It is a received law among all the Arabs, that whoever sheds the blood of a man, 
owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person. This ancient law is 
sanctioned by the Koran. “ O true believers, the law of retaliation is ordained to 
you for the slain: the free shall die for the free.” The Blood revenge, or Thar, as it 
is termed in Arabic, is claimed by the relatives of all who have been killed in open 
war. and not merely of the actual homicide, but of all his relations. For those 
billed in wars between two tribes, the price of blood is required from the persons 
who were known to have actually killed them. 

The Arab regards this blood revenge as one of his most sacred rights, as well as 
duties; no earthly consideration could induce him to give it up. He has a prover¬ 
bial saying. “Were hell-fire to be my lot, I would not relinquish the Thar See 
PnrrVharrJf. v. i 814. Notes. 



108 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


to witliin three miles of the gates of Medina, he slew two o? 
the prophet’s followers, ravaged the fields, and burned the 
date-trees. 

Mahomet sallied forth to meet him at the head of a superior 
force. Abu Sofian, regardless of his vow, did not await his 
approach, but turned bridle and fled. His troop clattered 
after him, throwing off their sacks of meal in the hurry of 
their flight; whence this scampering affair was derisively 
called “ The war of the meal sacks.” 

Moslem writers record an imminent risk of the prophet 
while yet in the field on this occasion. He was one day sleep¬ 
ing alone at the foot of a tree, at a distance from his camp, 
when he was awakened by a noise, and beheld Durtliur, a 
hostile warrior, standing over him with a drawn sword. “ Oh 
Mahomet,” cried he, “who is there now to save thee?” “ God!” 
replied the prophet. Struck with conviction, Durtliur let fall 
his sword, which was instantly seized upon by Mahomet. 
Brandishing the weapon, he exclaimed in turn, “Who is there 
now to save thee, oh Durtliur?” “Alas, no one!” replied the 
soldier. “Then learn from me to be merciful.” So saying, he 
returned the sword. The heart of the warrior was overcome; 
he acknowledged Mahomet as the prophet of God, and em¬ 
braced the faith.” 

As if the anecdote were not sufficiently marvellous, other 
devout Moslems affirm that the deliverance of Mahomet was 
through the intervention of the angel Gabriel, who, at the 
moment Durthur was about to strike, gave him a blow on the 
breast with his invisible hand, which caused him to let fall his 
sword. 

About this time the Koreishites of Mecca bethought them¬ 
selves of the relatives and disciples of Mahomet who had taken 
refuge from there persecutions in Abyssinia, most of whom 
still remained there under the protection of the Najashee or 
Abyssinian king. To this potentate the Koreishites sent an 
embassy to obtain the persons of the fugitives. One of the 
ambassadors was Abdallah Ibn Rabia; another was Amru Ibn 
A1 Aass, the distinguished poet who had assailed Mahomet at 
the outset of his mission with lampoons and madrigals. He 
was now more matured in years, and as remarkable for his 
acute sagacity as for his poetic talents. He was still a re¬ 
doubtable opponent of the faith of Islam, of which in after 
years he was to prove one of the bravest and most distin¬ 
guished champions. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


109 


Amru and Abdallah opened their embassy in the oriental 
style by the parade of rich presents, and then requested, in 
the name of the Koreish authorities of Mecca, that the fugi¬ 
tives might be delivered up to them. The king was a just man, 
and summoned the Moslems before him to explain this new 
and dangerous heresy of which they were accused. Among 
their number was Giafar, or Jaafar, the son of Abu Taleb, and 
brother of Ali, consequently the cousin of Mahomet. He was 
a man of persuasive eloquence and a most prepossessing ap¬ 
pearance. He stood forth on this occasion, and expounded 
the doctrines of Islam with zeal and power. The king, who, 
as has been observed, was a Nestorian Christian, found these 
doctrines so similar in many respects to those of his sect, and 
so opposed to the gross idolatry of the Koreishites, that, so far 
from giving up the fugitives, he took them more especially 
into favor and protection, and returning to Amru and Ab¬ 
dallah the presents they had brought, dismissed them from his 
court. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

GROWING TOWER OF MAHOMET—HIS RESENTMENT AGAINST THE 
JEWS—INSULT TO AN ARAB DAMSEL BY THE JEWISH TRIBE OF 
KAINOKA—A TUMULT—THE BENI KAINOKA TAKE REFUGE IN 
THEIR CASTLE—SUBDUED AND PUNISHED BY CONFISCATION AND 
BANISHMENT—MARRIAGE OF OTHMAN TO THE PROPHET’S DAUGH¬ 
TER OMM KOLTIIUM AND OF THE PROPHET TO HAFZA. 

The battle of Beder had completely changed the position of 
Mahomet; he was now a,triumphant chief of a growing power. 
The idolatrous tribes of Arabia were easily converted to a 
faith which flattered their predatory inclinations with the 
hope of spoil, and which, after all, professed but to bring them 
back to the primitive religion of their ancestors; the first cav¬ 
alcade, therefore, which entered the gates of Medina with the 
plunder of a camp made converts of almost all its heathen 
inhabitants, and gave Mahomet the control of the city. His 
own cone now became altered, and he spoke as a lawgiver and 
a sovereign. The first evidence of this change of feeling was 
in his treatment of the Jews, of whom there were three prin¬ 
cipal and powerful families in Medina. 



110 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

All the concessions made by him to that stiff-necked race 
had proved fruitless; they not only remained stubborn in un¬ 
belief, but treated him and his doctrines with ridicule. Assma, 
the daughter of Merwan, a Jewish poetess, wrote satires 
against him. She was put to death by one of his fanatic dis¬ 
ciples. Abu Afak, an Israelite, one hundred and twenty years 
,of age, was likewise slain for indulging in satire against the 
prophet. Kaab Ibn Aschraf, another Jewish poet, repaired to 
Mecca, after the battle of Beder, and endeavored to stir up the 
Koreishites to vengeance, reciting verses in which he extolled 
the virtues and bewailed the death of those of their tribe who 
had fallen in the battle. Such was his infatuation that he re¬ 
cited these verses in public, on his return to Medina, and in 
the presence of some of the prophet’s adherents who were 
related to the slain. Stung by this invidious hostility, Ma¬ 
homet one day exclaimed in his anger, ‘ ‘ Who will rid me of 
this son of Aschraf?” Within a few days afterward Kaab 
paid for his poetry with his life, being slain by a zealous An- 
sarian of the Awsite tribe. 

An event at length occurred which caused the anger of Ma¬ 
homet against the Jews to break out in open hostility. A 
damsel of one of the pastoral tribes of Arabs who brought 
milk to the city was one day in the quarter inhabited by the 
Beni Kainoka, or children of Kainoka, one of the three princi¬ 
pal Jewish families. Here she was accosted by a number of 
young Israelites, who having heard her beauty extolled, be¬ 
sought her to uncover her face. The damsel refused an act 
contrary to the laws of propriety among her people. A young 
goldsmith, -whose shop was hard by, secretly fastened the end 
of her veil to the bench on which she was sitting, so that when 
she rose to depart the garment remained, and her face was 
exposed to view. Upon this there was laughter and scoffing 
among the young Israelites, and the damsel stood in the midst 
confounded and abashed. A Moslem present, resenting the 
shame put upon her, drew his sword, and thrust it through 
the body of the goldsmith; he in his turn was instantly slain 
by the Israelites. The Moslems from a neighboring quarter 
flew to arms, the Beni Kainoka did the same, but being infe¬ 
rior in numbers, took refuge in a stronghold. Mahomet inter¬ 
fered to quell the tumult; but, being generally exasperated 
against the Israelites, insisted that the offending tribe should 
forthwith embrace the faith. They pleaded the treaty which 
he had made with them on his coming to Medina, by which 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Ill 


they were allowed the enjoyment of their religion; hut he was 
not to be moved. For some time the Beni Kainoka refused to 
yield, and remained obstinately shut up in their stronghold; 
hut famine compelled them to surrender. Abdallah Ibn Obba 
Solul, the leader of the Khazradites, who was a protector of 
this Jewish tribe, interfered in their favor, and prevented 
their being put to the sword; but their wealth and effects were 
confiscated, and they were banished to Syria, to the number 
of seven hundred men. 

The arms and riches accruing to the prophet and his follow¬ 
ers from this confiscation were of great avail in the ensuing 
wars of the faith. Among the weapons which fell to the share 
of Mahoipet are enumerated three swords: Medham, the Keen; 
al Batter, the Trenchant, and Hatef, the Deadly. Two lances, 
al Monthari, the Disperser, and al Monthawi, the Destroyer. 
A cuirass of silver, named al Fadlia, and another named al 
Saadia, said to have been given by Saul to David, when about 
to encounter Goliath. There was a bow, too, called al Catum, 
or the Strong, but it did not answer to its name, for in the first 
battle in which the prophet used it he drew it with such force 
that he broke it in pieces. In general he used the Arabian 
kind of bow, with appropriate arrows and lances, and forbade 
his followers to use those of Persia. 

Mahomet now sought no longer to conciliate the Jews; on 
the contrary, they became objects of his religious hostility. He 
revoked the regulation by which he had made Jerusalem the 
Kebla or point of prayer, and established Mecca in its place; 
toward which, ever since, the Mahometans turn their faces 
when performing their devotions. 

The death of the prophet’s daughter Rokaia had been prop¬ 
erly deplored by her husband Othman. To console the latter 
for his loss, Omar, his brother in arms, offered him, in the 
course of the year, his daughter Hafza for wife. She was the 
widow of Hobash, a Suhamite, eighteen years of age, and of 
tempting beauty, yet Othman declined the match. Omar was 
indignant at what he conceived a slight to his daughter and to 
himself, and complained of it to Mahomet. “Be not grieved, 
Omar,” replied the prophet, a better wife is destined for Oth¬ 
man, and a better husband for thy daughter.” He in effect 
gave his own daughter Omm Kolthum to Othman, and took 
the fair Hafza to wife himself. By these politic alliances he 
grappled both Othman and Omar more strongly to his side, 
while he gratified his own inclinations for female beauty. 


112 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Hafza, next to Ayesha, was the most favored of his wives; and 
was intrusted with the coffer containing the chapters and 
verses of the Koran as they were revealed. 


CHAPTER XX. 

HENDA INCITES ABU SOFIAN AND THE KOREISHITES TO REVENGE 
THE DEATH OF nER RELATIONS SLAIN IN THE BATTLE OF 
BEDER—THE KOREISHITES SALLY FORTH, FOLLOWED BY HENDA 
AND HER FEMALE COMPANIONS—BATTLE OF OHOD—FEROCIOUS 
TRIUMPH OF HENDA—MAHOMET CONSOLES HIMSELF BY MARRY¬ 
ING HEND, THE DAUGHTER OF OMEYA. 

As the power of Mahomet increased in Medina, the hostility 
of the Koreishites in Mecca augmented in virulence. Abu So- 
fian held command in the sacred city, and was incessantly 
urged to warfare by his wife Henda, whose fierce spirit could 
take no rest, until “blood revenge” had been wreaked on those 
by whom her father and brother had been slain. Akrema, 
also, a son of Abu Jahl, and who inherited his father’s hatred 
of the prophet, clamored for vengeance. In the third year of 
the Hegira, therefore, the year after the battle of Beder, Abu 
Sofian took the field at the head of three thousand men, most 
of them Koreishites, though there were also Arabs of the tribes 
of Kanana and Tehama. Seven hundred were armed with 
corselets, and two hundred were horsemen. Akrema was one 
of the captains, as was also Khaled Ibn al Waled, a warrior of 
indomitable valor, wlTo afterward rose to great renown. The 
banners were borne in front by the race of Abd al Dar, a branch 
of the tribe of Koreish, who had a hereditary right to the fore¬ 
most place in council, the foremost rank in battle, and to bear 
the standard in the advance of the army. 

In the rear of the host followed the vindictive Henda, with 
fifteen principal women of Mecca, relatives of those slain in the 
battle of Beder; sometimes filling the air with wailings and 
lamentations for the dead, at other times animating the troops 
with the sound of timbrels and warlike chants. As they passed 
through the village of Abwa, where Amina the mother of Ma¬ 
homet was interred, Henda was with difficulty prevented from 
tearing the mouldering bones out of the grave. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


113 


A1 Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, who still resided in Mecca, 
and was considered hostile to the new faith, seeing that destruc¬ 
tion threatened his nephew should that army come upon him 
by surprise, sent secretly a swift messenger to inform him of 
his danger. Mahomet was at the village of Koba when the 
message reached him. He immediately hastened back to Me¬ 
dina, and called a council of his principal adherents. Repre¬ 
senting the insufficiency of their force to take the field, he gave 
it as his opinion that they should await an attack in Medina, 
where the very women and children could aid them by hurling 
stones from the house-tops. The elder among his followers 
joined in his opinion; but the young men, of heady valor at all 
times, and elated by the late victory at Beder, cried out for a 
fair fight in the open field. 

Mahomet yielded to their clamors, but his forces, when mus¬ 
tered, were scarce a thousand men; one hundred only had 
cuirasses, and but two were horsemen. The hearts of those re* 
cently so clamorous to sally forth now misgave them, and they 
would fain await the encounter within the walls. “ No,” re¬ 
plied Mahomet, “it becomes not a prophet when once he has 
drawn the sword to sheathe it; nor when once he has advanced, 
to turn back, until God has decided between him and the foe.” 
So saying, he led forth his army. Part of it was composed of 
Jews and Khazradites, led by Abdallah Ibn Obba Solul. Ma¬ 
homet declined the assistance of the Jews, unless they embraced 
the faith of Islam, and as they refused, he ordered them back 
to Medina, upon which their protector, Abdallah, turned back 
also with his Khazradites, thus reducing [the army to about 
seven hundred men. 

With this small force Mahomet posted himself upon the hill 
of Ohod, about six miles from Medina. His position was partly 
defended by rocks and the asperities of the hill, and archers 
were stationed to protect him in flank and rear from the at¬ 
tacks of cavalry. He was armed with a helmet and two shirts 
of mail. On his sword was engraved, “Fear brings disgrace; 
forward lies honor. Cowardice saves no man from his fate.” 
As he was not prone to take an active part in battle, he confided 
his sword to a brave warrior, Abu Dudjana, who swore to 
wield it as long as it had edge and temper. For himself, he, as 
usual, took a commanding stand whence he might overlook the 
field. 

The Koreishites, confident in their numbers, came marching to 
the foot of the hill with banners flying. Abu Sofian 3ed tho cem 


114 


MAUOMET A AD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


tre; there were a hundred horsemen on each wing; the left com.' 
manded by Akrema, the son of Abu Jahl, the right by Khaled 
Ibn al Waled. As they advanced, Henda and her companions 
struck their timbrels and chanted their war song, shrieking out 
it intervals the names of those who had been slain in the battle 
of Beder. “ Courage, sons of Abd al Dar!” cried they to the 
standard-bearers. “Forward to the fight! close with the foe! 
strike home and spare not. Sharp be your swords and pitiless 
ycur hearts!” 

Mahomet restrained the impatience of his troops, ordering 
them not to commence the fight, but to stand firm and main¬ 
tain their ad vantage of the rising ground. Above all, the arch¬ 
ers were to keep to their post, let the battle go as it might, lest 
the cavalry should fall upon his rear. 

The horsemen of the left wing, led by Akrema, now at¬ 
tempted to take the Moslems in flank, but were repulsed by the 
archers, and retreated in confusion. Upon this Hamza set up 
the Moslem war-cry, Amit! amit! (Death! death!) and rushed 
down with his forces upon the centre. Abu Dudjana was at 
his right hand, armed with the sword of Mahomet and hav¬ 
ing a red band round his head, on which was written, “Help 
comes from God! victory is ours!” 

The enemy was staggered by the shock. Abu Dudjana 
dashed into the midst of them, dealing deadly blows on every 
side, and exclaiming, “The sword of God and his prophet!” 
Seven standard-bearers, of the race of Abd el Dar, were, one 
after the other, struck down, and the centre began to yield. 
The Moslem archers, thinking the victory secure, forgot the 
commands of Mahomet, and leaving their post, dispersed in 
quest of spoil, crying “Booty! booty!” Upon this Khaled, ral¬ 
lying the horse, got possession of the ground abandoned by the 
archers, attacked the Moslems in rear, put some to flight, and 
threw the rest in confusion. In the midst of the confusion a 
horseman, Obbij Ibn Chalaf by name, pressed through the 
throng, crying, “Where is Mahomet? There is no safety while 
he lives. ” But Mahomet, seizing a lance from an attendant, 
thrust it through the throat of the idolater, who fell dead from 
his horse. “Thus,” says the pious Al Jannabi, “died this 
enemy of God, who, some years before, had menaced the pro¬ 
phet, saying, ‘I shall find a day to slay thee.’ ‘Have a care, 1 
was the reply; ‘if it please Allah, thou thyself shall fall be¬ 
neath my hand. 1 ” 

In the midst of the melee a stone from a slm" 


"truck Maho- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


115 


met on the moutn, cutting his lip and knocking out one of his 
front teeth; he was wounded in the face also by an arrow, the 
iron head of which remained in the wound- Hamza, too, while 
slaying a Koreishite, was transfixed by the lance of Waksa, an 
Ethiopian slave, who had been promised his freedom if he 
should revenge the death of his master, slain by Hamza in the 
battle of Beder. M'osaab Tbn Omair, also, who bore the stand¬ 
ard of Mahomet, was laid low, but Ali seized the sacred ban¬ 
ner, and bore it aloft amid the storm of battle. 

As Mosaab resembled the prophet in person, a shout was put 
up by the enemy that Mahomet was slain. The Eoreishites 
were inspired with redoubled ardor at the sound; the Moslems 
fled in despair, bearing with them Abu Beker and Omar, who 
were wounded. Raab, the son of Malek, however, beheld Ma¬ 
homet lying among the wounded in a ditch, and knevr him by 
his armor. “ Oh believers!” cried he, “ the prophet of God yet 
lives. To the rescue! to the rescue!” Mahomet was drawn 
forth and borne up the hill to the summit of a rock, where the 
Moslems prepared for a desperate defence. The Eoreishites, 
however, thinking Mahomet slain, forbore to pursue them, con¬ 
tenting themselves with plundering and mutilating the dead. 
Henda and her female companions were foremost in the savage 
work of vengeance; and the ferocious heroine sought to tear 
out and devour the heart of Hamza. Abu Sofian bore a part 
of the mangled body upon his lance, and descending the hill 
in triumph, exclaimed exultingly, “War has its vicissitudes. 
The battle of Ohod succeeds to the battle of Beder.” 

The Eoreishites having withdrawn, Mahomet descended 
from the rock and visited the field of battle. At sight of the 
body of his uncle Hamza, so brutally mangled and mutilated, 
he vowed to inflict like outrage on seventy of the enemy when 
in his power. His grief, we are told, was soothed by the angel 
Gabriel, who assured him that Hamza was enregistered an in¬ 
habitant of the seventh heaven, by the title of “The lion of 
God and of his prophet.” 

The bodies of the slain were interred two and two, and three 
and three, in the places where they had fallen. Mahomet for¬ 
bade his followers to mourn for the dead by cutting off their 
hair, rending their garments, and the other modes of lamenta¬ 
tion usual among the Arabs; but he consented that they should 
weep for the dead, as tears relieve the overladen heart. 

The night succeeding the battle was one of great disquie¬ 
tude, lest the Eoreishites should make another attack, or 


.110 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


should surprise Medina. On the following day he marched 
in the direction of that city, hovering near the enemy, and 
on the return of night lighting numerous watch-fires. Abu 
Sofian, however, had received intelligence that Mahomet was 
still alive. He felt himself too weak to attack the city, there¬ 
fore, while Mahomet was in the field, and might come to its 
assistance, and he feared that the latter might be reinforced by 
its inhabitants, and seek him with superior numbers. Con¬ 
tenting himself, therefore, with the recent victory, he made a 
truce with the Moslems for a year, and returned in triumph to 
Mecca. 

Mahomet sought consolation for this mortifying defeat by 
taking to himself another wife, Hend, the daughter of Omeya, 
a man of great influence. She was a widow, and had, with her 
husband, been among the number of the fugitives in Abyssinia. 
She was now twenty-eight years of age, and had a son named 
Salma, whence she was commonly called Omm Salma, or the 
Mother of Salma. Being distinguished for grace and beauty, 
she had been sought by Abu Beker and Omar, but without suc¬ 
cess. Even Mahomet at first met with difficulty. ‘ ‘Alas!” said 
she, “ what happiness can the prophet of God expect with me? 
I am no longer young; I have a son, and I am of a jealous dis¬ 
position. ” “As to thy age, ” replied Mahomet, * ‘ thou art much 
younger than I. As to thy son, I will be a father to him; as 
to thy jealous disposition, I will pray Allah to root it from thy 
heart.” 

A separate dwelling was prepared for the bride, adjacent to 
the mosque. The household goods, as stated by a Moslem 
writer, consisted of a sack of barley, a hand-mill, a pan, and a 
pot of lard or butter. Such were as yet the narrow means of 
the prophet; or rather, such the frugality of his habits and 
ihe simplicity of Arab life. 


MAEOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


117 


CHAPTER XXI. 

x’REACHERY OF CERTAIN JEWISH TRIBES; THEIR PUNISHMENT- 
DEVOTION OF THE PROPHET’S FREEDMAN ZEID; DIVORCES HIS 
BEAUTIFUL WIFE ZEINAB, THAT SHE MAY BECOME THE WIFE 
OF THE PROPHET. 

The defeat of Mahomet at the battle of Ohod acted for a time 
unfavorably to his cause among some of the Arab and Jewish 
tribes, as was evinced by certain acts of perfidy. The inhabi¬ 
tants of two towns, Adhal and Kara, sent a deputation to him, 
professing an inclination to embrace the faith, and requesting 
missionaries to teach them its doctrines. He accordingly sent 
six disciples to accompany the deputation; but on the journey, 
while reposing by the brook Radje within the boundaries of 
the Hodseitites, the deputies fell upon the unsuspecting Mos¬ 
lems, slew four of them, and carried the other two to Mecca, 
where they gave them up to the Koreishites, who put them to 
death. 

A similar act of treachery was practised by the people of the 
province of Nadjed. Pretending to be Moslems, they sought 
succor from Mahomet against their enemies. He sent a number 
of his followers to their aid, who were attacked by the Beni 
Suleim or Saleimites, near the brook Manna, about four days’ 
journey from Medina, and slain almost to a man. One of the 
Moslems, Amni Ibn Omeya, escaped the carnage and made for 
Medina. On the way he met two unarmed Jews of the Beni 
Amir; either mistaking these for enemies, or provoked to 
wanton rage by the death of his comrades, he fell upon them 
and slew them. The tribe, who were at peace with Mahomet, 
called upon him for redress. He referred the matter to the 
mediation of another Jewish tribe, the Beni Nadher, who had 
rich possessions and a castle, called Zohra, within three miles 
of Medina. This tribe had engaged by treaty, when he came a 
fugitive from Mecca, to maintain a neutrality between him 
and his opponents. The chief of this tribe being now applied 
to as a mediator, invited Mahomet to an interview. He went, 
accompanied by Abu Beker, Omar, Ali, and a few others. A 
repast was spread in the open air before the mansion of the 
chief. Mahomet, however, received private information that 



118 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


he had been treacherously decoyed hither and was to be slain 
as he sat at the repast: it is said that he was to be crushed by 
a millstone, flung from the terraced roof of the house. With¬ 
out intimating his knowledge of the treason, he left the com¬ 
pany abruptly, and hastened back to Medina. 

His rage was now kindled against the whole race of Nadher, 
and he ordered them to leave the country within ten days on 
pain of death. They would have departed, but Abdallah the 
Khazradite secretly persuaded them to stay by promising 
them aid. He failed in his promise. The Beni Nadher* thus 
disappointed by the “Chief of the Hypocrites,” shut them¬ 
selves up in their castle of Zohra, where they were besieged by 
Mahomet, who cut down and burned the date-trees, on which 
they depended for supplies. At the end of six days they 
capitulated, and were permitted to depart, each with a camel 
load of effects, arms excepted. Some were banished to Syria, 
others to Kha'ibar, a strong Jewish city and fortress, distant 
several days’ journey from Medina. As the tribe was wealthy, 
there was great spoil, which Mahomet took entirely to him¬ 
self. His followers demurred that this was contrary to the 
law of partition revealed in the Koran; but he let them know 
that, according to another revelation, all booty gained, like 
the present, without striking a blow, ;was not won by man, but 
was a gift from God, and must be delivered over to the pro¬ 
phet to be expended by him in good works, and the relief of 
orphans, of the poor, and the traveller. Mahomet in effect did 
not appropriate it to his own benefit, but shared it among the 
Mohadjerins, or exiles from Mecca; two Nadherite Jews who 
had embraced Islamism, and two or three Ansarians or Auxi¬ 
liaries of Medina, who had proved themselves worthy, and 
were poor. 

We forbear to enter into details of various petty expeditions 
of Mahomet about this time, one of which extended to the 
neighborhood of Tabuk, on the Syrian frontier, to punish a 
horde which had plundered the caravans of Medina. These 
expeditions were checkered in their results, though mostly 
productive of booty, which now began to occupy the minds of 
the Moslems almost as much as the propagation of the faith. 
The spoils thus suddenly gained may have led to riot and de¬ 
bauchery, as we find a revelation of the passage of the Koran, 
forbidding wine and games of hazard, those fruitful causes of 
strife and insubordination in predatory camps. 

During this period of his career Mahomet in more than one 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


119 


instance narrowly escaped falling by the hand of an assassin. 
He himself is charged with the use of insidious means to rid 
himself of an enemy; for it is said that he sent Amru Ibn 
Omeya on a secret errand to Mecca, to assassinate Abu Sofian, 
but that the plot was discovered, and the assassin only 
escaped by rapid flight. The charge, however, is not well 
substantiated, and is contrary to his general character and 
conduct. 

If Mahomet had relentless enemies, he had devoted friends, 
an instance of which we have in. the case of his freedman and 
adopted son Zeid Ibn Horeth. He had been one of the first 
converts to the faith, and one of its most valiant champions. 
Mahomet consulted him on all occasions, and employed him in 
his domestic concerns. One day he entered his house with the 
freedom with which a father enters the dwelling of a son. 
Zeid was absent, but Zeinab his wife, whom he had recently 
married, was at home. She was the daughter of Djasch, of 
the country of Xaiba, and considered the fairest of her tribe. 
In the privacy of home she had laid aside her veil and part of 
her attire, so that her beauty stood revealed to the gaze of 
Mahomet on his sudden entrance. He could not refrain from 
expressions of wonder and admiration, to which she made no 
reply, but repeated them all to her husband on his return. 
Zeid knew the amorous susceptibility of Mahomet, and saw 
that he had been captivated by the beauty of Zeinab. Hasten¬ 
ing after him. he offered to repudiate his wife; but the pro¬ 
phet forbade it as contrary to the law. The zeal of Zeid was 
not to be checked; he loved his beautiful wife, but he vene¬ 
rated the prophet, and he divorced himself without delay. 
When the requisite term of separation had elapsed, Mahomet 
accepted, with gratitude, this pious sacrifice. His nuptials 
with Zeinab surpassed in splendor all his other marriages. 
His doors were thrown open to all comers; they were feasted 
with the flesh of sheep and lambs, with cakes of barley, with 
honey, and fruits, and favorite beverages; so they ate and 
drank their fill and then departed—railing against the divorce 
as shameful, and the marriage as incestuous. 

At this critical juncture was revealed that part of the thirty^ 
third chapter of the Horan, distinguishing relatives by adop¬ 
tion from relatives by blood, according to which there was no 
sin in marrying one who had been the wife of an adopted son. 
This timely revelation pacified the faithful; but, to destroy all 
shadow of a scruple, Mahomet revoked his adoption, and dh 


120 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


rected Zeid to resume his original appellation of Ibn Hareth, 
after his natural father. The beautiful Zeinab, however, 
boasted thenceforth a superiority over the other wives of the 
prophet on the score of the revelation, alleging that her mar¬ 
riage was ordained by heaven.* 


CHAPTER XXII. 

EXPEDITION OF MAHOMET AGAINST THE BENI MOSTALEK — HE 
ESPOUSES BARRA, A CAPTIVE—TREACHERY OF ABDALLAH IBN 
OBBA —AYESHA SLANDERED — HER VINDICATION — HER INNO¬ 
CENCE PROVED BY A REVELATION. 

Among the Arab tribes which ventured to take up arms 
against Mahomet after his defeat at Ohod, were the Beni Mos- 
talek, a powerful race of Koreishite origin. Mahomet received 
intelligence of their being assembled in warlike guise under 
their prince A1 Hareth, near the wells of Morai'si, in the terri¬ 
tory of Kedaid, and within five miles of the Red Sea. He 
immediately took the field at the head of a chosen band of 
the faithful, accompanied by numbers of the Khazradites, led 
by their chief Abdallah Ibn Obba. By a rapid movement he 
surprised the enemy; A1 Hareth was killed at the onset by the 
flight shot of an arrow; his troops fled in confusion after a 
brief resistance, in which a few were slain. Two hundred 
prisoners, five thousand sheep, and one thousand camels were 
the fruits of this easy victory. Among the captives was Barra, 
the daughter of A1 Hareth, and wife to a young Arab of her 
kin. In the division of the spoil she fell to the lot of Thabet 
Ibn Reis, who demanded a high ransom. The captive ap¬ 
pealed to Mahomet against this extortion, and prayed that the 
.ansom might be mitigated. The prophet regarded her with 
iyes of desire, for she was fair to look upon. “I can serve 
thee better,” said he, “than by abating thy ransom: be my 
wife.” The beautiful Barra gave ready consent; her ransom 
was paid by the prophet to Thabet; her kindred were liberated 
by the Moslems, to whose lot they had fallen; most of them 


* This was Mahomet’s second wife of the name of Zeinab*- the first, who had died 
gome time previous, was the daughter of Chuzeima. 




MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 12] 

embraced the faith, and Barra became the wife of Mahorcr 
after his return to Medina. 

After the battle the troops crowded round the wells of Me 
raisi to assuage their thirst. In the press a quarrel rose be 
tween some of the Mohadjerins, or exiles of Mecca, and the 
Khazradites, in which one of the latter received a blow. His 
comrades rushed to revenge the insult, and blood would have 
been shed but for the interference of Mahomet. The Khazra¬ 
dites remained incensed, and other of the people of Medina made 
common cause with them. Abdallah Ibn Obba, eager to take 
advantage of every circumstance adverse to the rising power 
of Mahomet, drew his kindred and townsfolk apart. ‘‘Be¬ 
hold,” said he, “the insults you have brought upon yourselves 
by harboring these fugitive Koreishites. You have taken them 
to your houses and given them your goods, and now they turn 
upon and maltreat you. They would make themselves your 
masters even in your own house; but by Allah, when we re¬ 
turn to Medina, we will see which of us is strongest.” 

Secret word was brought to Mahomet of this seditious speech. 
Omar counselled him at once to make way with Abdallah; but 
the prophet feared to excite the vengeance of the kindred and 
adherents of the powerful Khazradite. , To leave no time for 
mutiny, he set off immediately on the homeward march, al¬ 
though it was in the heat of the day, and continued on through¬ 
out the night, nor halted until the following noon, when the 
wearied soldiery cared for nothing but repose. 

On arriving at Medina, he called Abdallah to account for his 
seditious expressions. He flatly denied them, pronouncing the 
one who had. accused him a liar. A revelation from heaven, 
however, established the charge against him and his adherents. 
“These are the men,” says the Koran, “who say to the in¬ 
habitants of Medina, do not bestow anything on the refugees 
who are with the apostle of God, that they may be compelled 
to separate from him. They say, verily, if we return to Me¬ 
dina, the worthier will expel thence the meaner. God curse 
them! how are they turned aside from the truth.” 

Some of the friends of Abdallah, convinced by this revela¬ 
tion, advised him to ask pardon of the prophet; but he spurned 
their counsel. “ You have already,” said he, “persuaded me 
to give this man my countenance and friendship, and now 
you would have me put myself beneath his very feet.” 

Nothing could persuade him that Mahomet was not an idola¬ 
ter at heart, and his revelations all imposture and deceit. He 


122 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


considered him, however, a formidable rival, and sought in 
every way to injure and annoy him. To this implacable hos¬ 
tility is attributed a scandalous story which he propagated 
about Ayesha, the favorite wife of the prophet. 

It was the custom with Mahomet always to have one of his 
wives with him, on his military expeditions, as companion and 
solace; she was taken by lot, and on the recent occasion the 
lot had fallen on Ayesha. She travelled in a litter, inclosed 
by curtains, and borne on the back of a camel, which was led 
by an attendant. On the return homeward, the army, on one 
occasion, commg to a halt, the attendants of Ayesha were as¬ 
tonished to find the litter empty. Before they had recovered 
from their surprise, she arrived on a camel, led by a youthful 
Arab named Safwan Ibn al Moattel. This circumstance hav¬ 
ing come to the knowledge of Abdallah, he proclaimed it to the 
world after his return to Medina, affirming that Ayesha had 
been guilty of wantonness with the youthful Safwan. 

The story was eagerly caught up and circulated by Hamna, 
the sister of the beautiful Zeinab, whom Mahomet had re¬ 
cently espoused, and who hoped to benefit her sister by the 
downfall of her deadly rival Ayesha; it was echoed also by 
Mistah, a kinsman of Abu Beker, and was celebrated in satiri¬ 
cal verses by a poet named Hasan. 

It was some time before Ayesha knew of the scandal thus 
circulating at her expense. Sickness had confined her to the 
house on her return to Medina, and no one ventured to tell her 
of what she was accused. She remarked, however, that the 
prophet was stern and silent, and no longer treated her with 
his usual tenderness. On her recovery she heard with con¬ 
sternation the crime alleged against her, and protested her 
innocence. The following is her version of the story. 

The army on its homeward march had encamped not far 
from Medina, when orders were given in the night to march. 
The attendants, as usual, brought a camel before the tent of 
Ayesha, and placing the litter on the ground, retired until she 
could take her seat within it. As she was about to enter she 
missed her necklace, and returned into the tent to seek it. In 
the mean time the attendants lifted the litter upon the camel 
and strapped it fast, not perceiving that it was empty; she 
being slender and of little weight. When she returned from 
seeking the necklace, the camel was gone, and the army was 
on the march; whereupon she wrapped herself in her mantle 
and at dow , tnr .ing that, when her absence should be 


MAHOMET AMD' HIS SUCCESSORS. 128 

discovered, some persons would be sent back in quest of 
her. 

While thus seated, Safwan Ibn al Moattel, the young Arab, 
being one of the rear-guard, came up, and, recognizing her, ac* 
costed her with the usual Moslem salutation. ‘ ‘ To God we be¬ 
long, and to God we must return! Wife of the prophet, why 
dost thou remain behind?” 

Ayesha made no reply, but drew her veil closer over her face. 
Safwan then alighted, aided her to mount the camel, and, tak¬ 
ing the bridle, hastened to rejoin the army. The sun had 
risen, however, before he overtook it, just without the walls of 
Medina. 

This account, given by Ayesha, and attested by Safwan Ibn al 
Moattel, was satisfactory to her parents and particular friends, 
but was scoffed at by Abdallah and his adherents, “ the Hypo¬ 
crites.” Two parties thus arose on the subject, and great strife 
ensued. As to Ayesha, she shut herself up within her dwell¬ 
ing, refusing all food, and weeping day and night in the bitter* 
ness of her soul. 

Mahomet was sorely troubled in mind, and asked counsel of 
Ah in his perplexity. The latter made light of the affair, ob¬ 
serving that his misfortune was the frequent lot of man. The 
prophet was but little consoled by this suggestion. He re¬ 
mained separated from Ayesha for a month; but his heart 
yearned toward her; not merely on account of her beauty, but 
because he loved her society. In a paroxysm of grief, he fell 
into one of those trances which unbelievers have attributed to 
epilepsy; in the course of which he received a seasonable reve¬ 
lation, which will be found in a chapter of the Koran. It was 
to this effect. 

They who accuse a reputable female of adultery, and produce 
not four witnesses of the fact, shall be scourged with fourscore 
stripes, and their testimony rejected. As to those who have 
made the charge against Ayesha, have they produced four wit¬ 
nesses thereof? If they have not, they are liars in the sight of 
God. Let them receive, therefore, the punishment of their 
crime. 

The innocence of the beautiful Ayesha being thus miracu¬ 
lously made manifest, the prophet took her to his bosom with 
augmented affection. Nor was he slow in dealing the pre* 
scribed castigation, It is true Abdallah Ibn Obba was too pow¬ 
erful a personage to be subjected to the scourge, but it fell the 
heavier mi the shoulders of his fellow calumniators. The poet 


124 


MAHOMET AM) I1IS SUCCESSOR S. 


Hasan was cured for some time of his propensity to make sa. 
tirical verses, nor could Hamna, though a female and of great 
personal charms, escape the infliction of stripes; for Mahomet 
observed that such beauty should have been accompanied by a 
gentler nature. 

The revelation at once convinced the pious Ali of the purity 
of Ayesha; but she never forgot nor forgave that he had 
doubted; and the hatred thus implanted in her bosom was 
manifested to his great detriment in many of the most impor¬ 
tant concerns of his after life 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE BATTLE OF THE MOAT—BRAVERY OF SAAD IBN MOAD—DE¬ 
FEAT OF THE KOREISHITES—CAPTURE OF THE JEWISH CASTLE 
OF KORAIDA—SAAD DECIDES AS TO THE PUNISHMENT OF THE 
JEWS—MAHOMET ESPOUSES REHANA, A JEWISH CAPTIVE—HIS 
LIFE ENDANGERED BY SORCERY; SAVED BY A REVELATION OF 
THE ANGEL GABRIEL. 

During the year of truce which succeeded the battle of Ohod, 
Abu Sofian, the restless chief of the Koreishites, formed a con¬ 
federacy with the Arab tribe of Ghatafan and other tribes of 
the desert, as well as with many of the Jews of the race of 
Nadher, whom Mahomet had driven from their homes. The 
truce being ended, he prepared to march upon Medina, with 
these confederates, their combined forces amounting to ten 
thousand men. 

Mahomet had early intelligence of the meditated attack, but 
his late reverse at Ohod made him wary of taking the field 
against such numbers; especially as he feared the enemy might 
have secret allies in Medina; where he distrusted the Jewish 
inhabitants and the Hy pocrites, the partisans of Abdallah Ibn 
Obba, who were numerous and powerful. 

Great exertions were now made to put the city in a state of 
defence. Salman the Persian, who had embraced the faith, ad¬ 
vised that a deep moat should be digged at some distance be¬ 
yond the wall, on the side on which the enemy would approach. 
This mode of defence, hitherto unused in Arabia, was eagerly 
adopted by Mahomet, who set a great number of men to dig 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


1%-f 

the moat, and even assisted personally in the lanor. Many 
miracles are recorded of him during the progress of this work. 
At one time, it is said, he fed a great multitude from a single 
basket of dates, which remained full after all were satisfied. 
At another time he feasted a thousand men upon a roasted 
lamb and a loaf of barley bread; yet enough remained for all 
his fellow-laborers in the moat. Nor must we omit to note the 
wonderful blows which he gave to a rock with an iron mallet, 
striking off sparks which in one direction lighted up all Yemen, 
or Arabia the Happy; in another revealed the imperial palace 
at Constantinople; and in a third illumined the towers of the 
royal residence of Persia—all signs and portents of the future 
conquests of Islam. 

Scarcely was the moat completed when the enemy appeared 
in great force on the neighboring hills. Leaving Ibn Omm 
Mactum, a trusty officer, to command in the city, and keep a 
vigilant eye on the disaffected, Mahomet sallied forth with 
. three thousand men, whom he formed in battle array, having 
the deep moat in front. Abu Sofian advanced confidently with 
his combined force of Koreishites and Ghatafanites, but was 
unexpectedly checked by the moat, and by a galling fire from 
the Moslems drawn up beyond it. The enemy now encamped; 
the Koreishites in the lower part of the valley, and the Ghatafa¬ 
nites in the upper; and for some days the armies remained on 
each side of the moat, keeping up a distant combat with slings 
and stones and flights of arrows. 

In the mean time spies brought word to Mahomet that a Jew¬ 
ish tribe, the Beni Koraida, who had a strong castle near the 
city, and had made a covenant of peace with him, were in 
secret league with the enemy. He now saw the difficulty with 
his scanty forces to man the whole extent of the moat; to 
guard against a perfidious attack from the Koraidites, and to 
maintain quiet in the city where the Jews must have secret 
confederates. Summoning a council of war he consulted with 
his captains on the policy of bribing the Ghatafanites to a sepa¬ 
rate peace by offering them a third of the date-harvest of Me¬ 
dina. Upon this, Saad Ibn Moad, a stout leader of the Awsites 
of Medina, demanded: “Do you propose this by the command 
of Allah, or is it an idea of your own?” “ If it had been a com¬ 
mand of Allah,” replied Mahomet, “I should never have asked 
your advice. I see you pressed by enemies on every side, and 
I seek to break their confederacy.” “Oh prophet of God!” re¬ 
joined Saad, “ when wc were fellow-idolaters with these people 


126 


MAHOMET AMD JUS SUCCESSORS. 


of Ghatafan, they got none of our dates without paying for 
them; and shall we give them up gratuitously now that we are 
of the true faith, and led by thee? No, by Allah! if they want 
our dates they must win them with their swords!” 

The stout Saad had his courage soon put to the proof. A 
prowling party of Koreishite horsemen, among whom was 
Akrema, the son of Abu Jahl, and Amru, uncle of Mahomet’s 
first wife Cadijah, discovered a place where the moat was 
narrow, and putting spui's to their steeds succeeded in leap¬ 
ing over, followed by some of their comrades. They .then 
challenged the bravest of the Moslems to equal combat. The 
challenge was accepted by Saad Ibn Moad, by Ali, and several 
of their companions. Ali had a close combat with Amru; 
they fought on horseback and on foot, until, grappling with 
each other, they rolled in the dust. In the end Ali was 
victorious, and slew his foe. The general conflict was main¬ 
tained with great obstinacy; several were slain on both sides, 
and Saad Ibn Moad was severely wounded. At length the 
Koreishites gave way, and spurred their horses to recross the 
moat. The steed of one of them, Nawfal Ibn Abdallah, leaped 
short; his rider was assailed with stones while m the moat, 
and defied the Moslems to attack him with nobler weapons. 
In an instant Ali sprang down into the moat, and Nawfal soon 
fell beneath his sword. Ali then joined his companions in 
pursuit of the retreating foe, and wounded Akrema with a 
javelin. This skirmish was dignified with the name of the 
battle of the Moat. 

Mahomet, still unwilling to venture a pitched battle, sent 
Rueim, a secretly converted Arab of the tribe of Ghatafan, to 
visit the camps of the confederates and artfully to sow dissen¬ 
sions among them. Rueim first repaired to the Koraidites, 
with whom he was in old habits of friendship. “What folly 
is this,” said he, “to suffer yourselves to be drawn by the 
Koreishites of Mecca into tlieir quarrel. Bethink you how 
different is your situation from theirs. If defeated, they have 
only to retreat to Mecca, and be secure. Their allies from the 
desert will also retire to their distant homes, and you will be 
left to bear the whole brunt of the vengeance of Mahomet and 
the people of Medina. Before you make common cause with 
them, therefore, let them pledge themselves and give hostages, 
never to draw back until they have broken the power of 
Mahomet.” 

He then went to the Koreishites and the tribe of Ghatafan, 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


127 


and warned them against confiding in the Jews of Koraida, 
who intended to get hostages from them, and deliver them up 
into the hands of Mahomet. 

The distrust thus artfully sown among the confederates soon 
produced its effects. Abu Sofian sent word on Friday even 
ing, to the Koraidites, to be ready to join next morning in a 
general assault. The Jews replied that the following day was 
their Sabbath, on which they could not engage in battle; at 
the same time they declined to join in any hostile act, unless 
their allies should give hostages to stand by them to the end. 

The Koreishites and Ghatafanites were now convinced of the 
perfidy of the Koraidites, and dared not venture upon the 
meditated attack, lest these should fall upon them in the rear. 
While they lay idly in their camp a cold storm came on, with 
drenching rain and sweeping blasts from the desert. Their 
tents were blown down; their camp-fires were extinguished; 
in the midst of the uproar the alarm was given that Mahomet 
had raised the storm by enchantment, and was coming upon 
them with his forces. All now was panic and confusion. Abu 
Sofian, finding all efforts vain to produce order, mounted his 
camel in despair, and gave the word to retreat. The con¬ 
federates hurried off from the scene of Tumult and terror, the 
Koreishites toward Mecca, the others to their homes in the 
desert. 

Abu Sofian, in rage and mortification, wrote a letter to 
Mahomet, upbraiding him with his cowardice in lurking 
behind a ditch, a thing unknown in Arabian warfare; and 
threatening to take his revenge on some future day, when 
they might meet in open fight, as in the field of Ohod. Maho¬ 
met hurled back a defiance, and predicted that the day was 
approaching when he would break in pieces the idols of the 
Koreishites. 

The invaders having disappeared, Mahomet turned to take 
vengeance on the Beni Koraida, who shut themselves up in 
their castle, and withstood a siege of many days. At length, 
pinched by famine, they implored the intercession of their 
ancient friends and protectors, the Awsites. The latter 
entreated the prophet to grant these Hebrews the same 
terms he had formerly granted to the Beni Kainoka, at the 
prayer of Abdallah the Khazradite. Mahomet reflected a 
moment, and offered to leave their fate to the decision of 
Saad Ibn Moad, the Awsite chief. The Koraidites gladly 
agreed, knowing him to have been formerly their friend. 


128 


MAHOMET AjSD MS SUCCESSORS. 


They accordingly surrendered themselves to the number of 
seven hundred and were conducted in chains to Medina. 
Unfortunately for them. Saad considered their perfidious 
league with the enemy as one cause of the recent hostility. 
He was still smarting with the wound received in the battle 
of the Moat, and in his moments of pain and anger had re 
peatedly prayed that his life might be spared to see ven¬ 
geance wreaked on the Koraidites. Such was the state of 
his feelings when summoned to decide upon their fate. 

Being a gross, tull-blooded man, he was with difficulty 
helped upon an ass, propped up by a leathern cushion, and 
supported in his seat until he arrived at the tribunal of justice. 
Before ascending it, he exacted an oath from all present to 
abide by his decision. The Jews readily took it, anticipating 
a favorable sentence. No sooner was he helped into the tri¬ 
bunal, than, extending his hand, he condemned the men to 
death, the women and children to slavery, and their effects to 
be shared among the victors. 

The wretched Jews looked aghast, but there was no appeal. 
They were conducted to a public place since called the Market 
of the Koraidites, where great graves had been digged. Into 
these they were compelled to descend, one by one, their prince 
Hoya Ibn Ahktab among the number, and were successively 
put to death. Thus the prayer of Saad Ibn Moad for ven¬ 
geance on the Koraidites was fully gratified. He witnessed 
the execution of the men he had condemned, but such was his 
excitement that his wound broke out afresh, and he died 
shortly afterward. 

In the Castle of Koraida was found a great quantity of pikes, 
lances, cuirasses, and other armor; and its lands were covered 
with flocks, and herds, and camels. In dividing the spoil each 
foot soldier had one lot, each horseman three; two for his 
horse and one for himself. A fifth part of the whole was set 
apart for the prophet. 

The most precious prize in the eyes of Mahomet was Rihana, 
daughter of Simeon, a wealthy and powerful Jew, and the 
most beautiful female of her tribe. He took her to himself, 
and, having converted her to the faith, added her to the num¬ 
ber of his wives. 

But, though thus susceptible of the charms of the Israelitish 
women, Mahomet became more and more vindictive in his 
hatred of the men; no longer putting faith in their covenants, 
and suspecting them ' c the most insidious attempts upon his 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


m 

life. Moslem writers attribute to the spells of Jewish sorcerers 
a long and languishing illness, with which he was afflicted 
about this time, and which seemed to defy all remedy. They 
describe the very charm by which it was produced. It was 
prepared, say they, by a Jewish necromancer from the moun¬ 
tains, aided by his daughters, who were equally skilled in the 
diabolic art. They formed a small waxen effigy of Mahomet; 
wound round it some of his hair, and thrust through it eleven 
needles. They then made eleven knots in a how-string, blow¬ 
ing with their breaths on each; and, winding a string round 
the effigy, threw the whole into a well. 

Under the influence of this potent spell Mahomet wasted 
away, until his friend, the angel Gabriel, revealed the secret 
to him in a vision. On awaking he sent Ali to the well, where 
the image was discovered. When it was brought to Mahomet, 
continues the legend, he repeated over it the two last chapters 
of the Koran, which had been communicated to him in the 
recent vision. They consist of eleven verses, and are to the 
following purport. 

In the name of the all merciful God! I will fly for refuge to 
the Lord of the light of day. 

That he may deliver me from the danger of beings and 
tlungs created by himself. 

From the dangers of the darksome night, and of the moon 
when in eclipse. 

From the danger of sorcerers, who tie knots and blow on 
them with their breath. 

From the danger of the envious, who devise deadly harm. 

I will fly for refuge to Allah, the Lord of. men. 

To Allah, the King of men. 

To Allah, the God of men. 

That he may deliver me from the evil spirit who flies at the 
mention of his holy name. 

Who suggests evil thoughts into the hearts of the children 
of men. 

And from the evil Genii and men who deal in magic. 

At the repetition of each one of these verses, says the legend, 
a knot of the bowstring came loose, a needle fell from the 
effigy, and Mahomet gained strength. At the end of the 
pleventh verse he rose, renovated in healtli and Wgor, as one 
restored to freedom after having been bound with cords. 

Th 3 two final chapters of the Koran, which comprise these 
verses, are entitled the amulets, and considered by the super- 


130 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


stitious Moslems effectual talismans against sorcery and magic 
charms. 

The conduct of Mahomet in the affair narrated in this chap¬ 
ter has been censured as weak and vacillating, and deficient in 
mili tary decision, and his measures as wanting in true great¬ 
ness of mind, and the following circumstances are adduced to 
support these charges. When threatened with violence from 
without, and perfidy from within, he is for bribing a part of 
his confederate foes to a separate peace; but suffers himself to 
be, in a manner, hectored out of this crafty policy by Saad £bn 
Moad; yet, subsequently, he resorts to a scheme still more 
subtle and crafty, by which he sows dissension among his 
enemies. Above all, his conduct toward the Jews has been 
strongly reprobated. His referring the appeal of the Beni 
Koraida for mercy, to the decision of one whom he knew to 
be bent on their destruction, has been stigmatized as cruel 
mockery; and the massacre of those unfortunate men in the 
market-place of Medina is pronounced one of the darkest pages 
of his history. In fact, his conduct toward this race from the 
time that he had power in his hands forms an exception to the 
general tenor of his disposition, which was forgiving and 
humane. He may have been especially provoked against 
them by proofs of treachery and deadly rancor on their part; 
but we see in this, as in other parts of his policy in this part of 
his career, instances of that worldly alloy which at times was 
debasing his spirit, now that he had become the Apostle of the 
Sword. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

MAHOMET UNDERTAKES A PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA—EVADES KHA- 
LED AND A TROOP OF HORSE SENT AGAINST HIM—ENCAMPS 
NEAR MECCA—NEGOTIATES WITH THE KOREISHITES FOR PER¬ 
MISSION TO ENTER AND COMPLETE HIS PILGRIMAGE—TREATY 
FOR TEN YEARS, BY WHICH HE IS PERMITTED TO MAKE A 
YEARLY VISIT OF THREE DAYS—HE RETURNS TO MEDINA. 

Six years had now elapsed since the flight of Mahomet from 
Mecca. As that city was sacred in the eyes of the Arabs and 
their great point of pilgrimage, his- long exile from it, and his 
open warfare with the Koreishites, who had charge of the 



MAHOMET AND H/S SUCCESSORS. 


131 


Caaba, prejudiced him in the opinion of many of the tribes, 
and retarded the spread of his doctrines. His followers, too, 
who had accompanied him in his flight, languished once more 
to see their native home, and there was danger of their faith 
becoming enfeebled under a protracted exile. 

Mahomet felt more and more the importance of linking the 
sacred city with his religion, and maintaining the ancient 
usages of his race. Besides, he claimed but to be a reformer, 
anxious to restore the simplicity and purity of the patriarchal 
faith. The month Doul Kaada was at hand, the month of pil¬ 
grimage, when there was a truce to warfare, and enemies 
might meet in peace within the holy boundaries. A timely 
vision assured Mahomet that he and his followers might safely 
avail themselves of the protection of this venerable custom to 
revisit the ancient shrines of Arabian worship. The revelation 
was joyfully received by his followers, and in the holy month 
he set forth for Medina on his pilgrimage, at the head of four¬ 
teen hundred men, partly Mohadjenns or Fugitives, and 
partly Ansarians or Auxiliaries. They took with them 
seventy camels to be slain in sacrifice at the Caaba. To 
manifest publicly that they came in peace and not in war, 
they halted at Dsu Huleifa, a village about a day’s journey 
from Medina, where they laid aside all their weapons, except¬ 
ing their sheathed swords, and thence continued on in pilgrim 
garb. 

In the mean time a confused rumor of this movement had 
reached Mecca. The Koreishites, suspecting hostilities, sent 
forth Khaled Ibn Waled with a powerful troop of horse, to 
take post in a valley about two days’ journey from Mecca, and 
check the advance of the Moslems. 

Mahomet, hearing that the main road was thus barred 
against him, took a rugged and difficult route through the de¬ 
files of the mountains, and, avoiding Khaled and his forces, 
descended into the plain near Mecca, where he encamped at 
Hodeiba, within the sacred boundaries. Hence he sent assur¬ 
ances to the Koreishites of his peaceable intentions, and claimed 
the immunities and rights of pilgrimage. 

Envoys from the Koreishites visited his camp to make ob¬ 
servations. They were struck with the reverence with which 
he was regarded by his followers. The water with which he per¬ 
formed his ablutions became sanctified; a hair falling from his 
head, or the paring of a nail, was caught up as a precious relic. 
One of the envoys in the course of conversation, unconsciously 


132 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


touched the flowing beard of the prophet; he was thrust back 
by the disciples, and warned of the impiety of the act. In 
making his report to the Koreishites on his return, “I have 
seen the king of Persia and the emperor of Constantinople 
surrounded by their courts,” said he, “ but never did I behold 
a sovereign so revered by his subjects, as is Mahomet by his 
followers.” 

The Koreishites were the more loath to admit into their city 
an adversary to their sect, so formidable in his influence over 
the minds and affections of his fellow-men. Mahomet sent re¬ 
peated missions to treat for a safe access to the sacred shrines, 
but in vain. Othman Ibn Affan, his son-in-law, was his last 
envoy. Several days elapsed without his return, and it was 
rumored that he was slain. Mahomet determined to revenge 
his fall. Standing under a tree, and summoning his people 
around him, he exacted an oath to defend him even to the death, 
and never to desert the standard of the faith. This ceremony 
is known among Mahometans by the name of the Spontaneous 
Inauguration. 

The reappearance of Othman in the camp restored tranquil¬ 
lity. He was accompanied by Solhail, an ambassador from the 
Koreishites, to arrange a treaty of peace. They perceived the 
impolicy of warring with a man whose power was incessantly 
increasing, and who was obeyed with such fanatic devotion. 
The treaty proposed was for ten years, during which time Ma¬ 
homet and his adherents were to have free access to Mecca as 
pilgrims, there to remain, three days at a time, in the exercise 
of their religious rites. The terms were readily accepted, and 
Ali was employed to draw up the treaty. Mahomet dictated 
the words. ‘ ‘ Write, ” said he, ‘ ‘ these are the conditions of peace 
made by Mahomet the apostle of God.” “ Hold!” cried Solhail, 
the ambassador; “had I believed thee to be the apostle of God, 
I should never have taken up arms against thee. Write, there¬ 
fore, simply thy name, and the name of thy father.” Mahomet 
was fain to comply, for he felt he was not sufficiently in force 
at this moment to contend about forms; so he merely denomi 
nated himself in the treaty, Mahomet Ibn Abdallah (Mahomet 
the son of Abdallah), an abnegation which gave some little 
scandal to his followers. Their discontent was increased when 
he ordered them to shave their heads, and to sacrifice on the 
spot the camels brought to be offered up at the Caaba, as it 
showed he had not the intention of entering Mecca, these rites 
being properly done at the conclusion of the ceremonials of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


133 

pilgrimage. They reminded him of his vision which promised 
a safe entrance of the sacred city: he replied, that the present 
treaty was an earnest of its fulfilment, which would assuredly 
take place on the following year. With this explanation they 
had to content themselves; and having performed the cere¬ 
mony, and made the sacrifice prescribed, the camp was broken 
up, and the pilgrim host returned, somewhat disappointed and 
dejected, to Medina. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

EXPEDITION AGAINST THE CITY OF KHAIBAR; SIEGE—EXPLOITS 
OF MAHOMET’S CAPTAINS—BATTLE OF ALI AND MARHAB—STORM¬ 
ING OF THE CITADEL—ALI MAKES A BUCKLER OF THE GATE- 
CAPTURE OF THE PLACE—MAHOMET POISONED; HE MARRIES 
SAFIYA, A CAPTIVE; ALSO OMM HABIBA, A WIDOW. 

To console his followers for the check their religious devotion 
had experienced at Mecca, Mahomet now set on foot an expe¬ 
dition calculated to gratify that love of plunder, which began 
to rival fanaticism in attaching them to his standard. 

About five days’ journey to the northeast of Medina was situ¬ 
ated the city of Khaihar, and its dependent territory. It was 
inhabited by Jews, who had grown wealthy by commerce as 
well as agriculture. Their rich domain was partly cultivated 
with grain, and planted with groves of palm-trees; partly de¬ 
voted to pasturage and covered with flocks and herds; and it 
was fortified by several castles. So venerable was its antiquity 
that Abulfeda, the Arabian historian, assures us that Moses, 
after the passage of the Red Sea, sent an army against the 
Amalekites, inhabiting Gothreb (Medina), and the strong city 
of Khaibar. 

This region had become a place of refuge for the hostile Jews, 
driven by Mahomet from Medina and its environs, and for all 
those who had made themselves obnoxious to his vengeance. 
These circumstances, together with its teeming wealth, pointed 
it out as a fit and ripe object for that warfare which he had 
declared against all enemies of the faith. 

Tn the beginning of the seventh year of the Hegira, he de¬ 
parted on an expedition against Khaibar, at the head of twelve 
hundred foot and two hundred horse, accompanied by Abu 



134 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS 


Beker, by Ali, by Omar, and other of his principal officers. He 
had two standards; one represented the sun, the other a black 
eagle; which last became famous in after years as the standard 
of Khaled. 

Entering the fertile territory of Khaibar, he began nis war 
fare by assailing the inferior castles with which it was studded. 
Some of these capitulated without making resistance; in which 
cases, being considered “gifts from God,” the spoils went to 
the prophet, to be disposed of by him in the way before men¬ 
tioned. Others of more strength, and garrisoned by stouter 
hearts, had to be taken by storm. 

After the capture of these minor fortresses, Mahomet ad¬ 
vanced against the city of Khaibar. It was strongly defended 
by outworks, and its citadel, A1 Kamus, built on a steep rock, 
was deemed impregnable, insomuch that Kenana Ibn al Rabi, 
the chief or king of the nation, had made it the depository of 
all his treasures. 

The siege of this city was the most important enterprise the 
Moslems had yet undertaken. When Mahomet first came in 
sight of its strong and frowning walls, and its rock-built cita¬ 
del, he is said to have put up the following prayer: 

“Oh Allah! Lord of the seven heavens, and of all things 
which they cover! Lord of the seven earths, and all which 
they sustain! Lord of the evil spirits, and of all whom they 
lead astray! Lord of the winds, and of all whom they scatter 
and disperse! We supplicate thee to deliver into our hands 
this city, and all that it contains, and the riches of all its lands. 
To thee we look for aid against this people, and against all the 
perils by which we are environed.” 

To give more solemnity to his prayers, he chose as his place 
of worship a great rock, in a stony place called Mansela, and, 
during all the time that he remained encamped before Khaibar, 
made daily seven circuits round it, as are made round the 
Caaba. A mosque was erected on this rock in after times in 
memorial of this devout ceremonial, and it became an object of 
veneration to all pious Moslems. 

The siege of the citadel lasted for some time, and tasked the 
skill and patience of Mahomet and his troops, as yet but little 
practised in the attack of fortified places. They suffered too 
from want of provisions, for the Arabs in their hasty expedi¬ 
tions seldom burden themselves with supplies, and the Jews on 
their approach had laid waste the level country, and destroyed 
the palm-trees round their capital. 


MAHOMET AN1) HIS SUCCESSORS. 135 

Mahomet directed the attacks in person; the besiegers pro¬ 
tected themselves by trenches, and brought battering-rams to 
play upon the walls; a breach was at length effected, but for 
several days every attempt to enter was vigorously repelled. 
Abu Beker at one time led the assault, bearing the standard of 
the prophet; but, after fighting with great bravery, was com¬ 
pelled to retreat. The next attack was headed by Omar lbn 
Khattab, who fought until the close of day with no better 
success. A third attack was led by Ali, whom Mahomet armed 
with his own scimetar, called DliuT-Fakar, or the Trenchant. 
On confiding to his hands the sacred banner, he pronounced 
him “ a man who loved God and his prophet; and whom God 
and his prophet loved. A man who knew not fear, nor ever 
turned his back upon a foe. ” 

And here it may be well to give a traditional account of the 
person and character of Ali. He was of the middle height, but 
robust and square, and of prodigious strength. He had a 
smiling countenance, exceedingly florid, with a bushy beard. 
He was distinguished for an amiable disposition, sagacious 
intellect, and religious zeal, and, from his undaunted courage, 
was surnamed the Lion of God. 

Arabian writers dwell with fond exaggeration on the exploits 
at Khaibar of this their favorite hero. He was clad, they say, 
in a scarlet vest, over which was buckled a cuirass of steel. 
Scrambling with his followers up the great heap of stones and 
rubbish in front of the breach, he planted his standard on the 
top, determined never to recede until the citadel was taken. 
The Jews sallied forth to drive down the assailants. In the 
conflict which ensued, Ali fought hand to hand with the Jew¬ 
ish commander, A1 ILareth, whom he slew. The brother of 
the slain advanced to revenge his death. He was of gigantic 
stature, with a double cuirass, a double turban, wound round 
a helmet of proof, in front of which sparkled an immense dia¬ 
mond. He had a sword girt to each side, and brandished a 
three-pronged spear, like a trident. The warriors measured 
each other with the eye. and accosted each other in boasting 
oriental style. 

“I,” said the Jew, “am Marhab, armed at all points, and 
terrible in battle.” 

“And I am Ali, whom his mother, at his birth, surnamed 
A1 Haidara (the rugged lion).” 

The Moslem writers make short work of the Jewish cham¬ 
pion. He made a thrust at Ali with his three-pronged lance, 


136 


MAHOMET AXE JUS SUCCESSORS. 


but it was dexterously parried, and before he r could recover 
himself, a blow from the scimetar Dhu’l-Fakar divided his 
buckler, passed through the helm of proof, through doubled 
turban and stubborn skull, cleaving his head even to his teeth. 
His gigantic form fell lifeless to the earth. 

The Jews now retreated into the citadel, and a general as¬ 
sault took place. In the heat of the action the shield of Ali 
was severed from his arm, leaving his body exposed; wrench¬ 
ing a gate, however, from its hinges, he used it as a buckler 
through the remainder of the fight. Abu Rafe, a servant of 
Mahomet, testifies to the fact. “I afterward,” says he, “ex¬ 
amined this gate in company with seven men, and all eight of 
us attempted in vain to wield it.”* 

The citadel being captured, every vault and dungeon was 
ransacked for the wealth said to be deposited there by Kenana, 
the Jewish prince. None being discovered, Mahomet de¬ 
manded of him where he had concealed his treasure. He 
declared that it had all been expended in the subsistence of his 
troops, and in preparations for defence. One of his faithless 
subjects, however, revealed the place where a great amount 
had been hidden. It did not equal the expectations of the 
victors, and Kenana was put to the torture to reveal the rest 
of his supposed wealth. He either could not or would not 
make further discoveries, so he was delivered up to the ven¬ 
geance of a Moslem, whose brother he had crushed to death 
by a piece of millstone hurled from the wall, and who struck 
off his head with a single blow of his sabre, f 
While in the citadel of Khaibar, Mahomet came near falling 
a victim to Jewish vengeance. Demanding something to eat, 
a shoulder of lamb was set before him. At the first mouthful 
he perceived something unusual in the taste, and spat it forth, 
but instantly felt acute internal pain. One of his followers 
named Baschar, who had eaten more freely, fell down and ex¬ 
pired in convulsions. All now was confusion and consterna¬ 
tion: on diligent inquiry, it was found that the lamb had been 


* This stupendous feat is recorded by the historian Abulfeda, c. 21. “ Abu Rafe,” 
observes Gibbon, “was an eye-witness; but who will be witness for Abu Rafe?” 
We join with the distinguished historian in his doubt; yet if we scrupulously ques- 
tiou the testimony of an eye witness, what will become of history? 

t The Jews inhabiting the tract of country called Khaibar are still known in 
Arabia by .the name of Beni Kheibar, They are divided into three tribes, undei 
independent Sheikhs, the Beni Messiad, Beni Schahan, and Beni Anaesse.’ They 
are accused of pillaging the caravans.— Niebuhr, v. ii. p. 43, 




MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


137 


cooked by Zainab, a female captive, niece to Marhab, the 
gigantic warrior slain by Ali. Being brought before Mahomet, 
and charged with having infused poison into the viand, she 
boldly avowed it, vindicating it as a justifiable revenge for 
the ills he had brought upon her tribe and her family. “1 
thought,” said she, “if thou wort indeed a prophet, thou 
wouldst discover thy danger; if but a chieftain, thou woulds* 
fall, and we should be delivered from a tyrant.” 

Arabian writers are divided as to the fate of this heroine. 
According to some, she was delivered up to the vengeance of 
the relatives of Baschar, who had died of the poison. Accord¬ 
ing to others, her beauty pleaded in her behalf, and Mahomed 
restored her unharmed to her family. ^ 

The samQ writers seldom permit any remarkable event ot 
Mahomet’s life to pass without a miracle. In the present 
instance, they assure us that the poisoned shoulder of lamb be¬ 
came miraculously gifted with speech, and warned Mahomet 
of his danger. If so, it was rather slow of speech, for he had 
imbibed sufficient poison to injure his constitution throughout 
the remainder of his life, affecting him often with paroxysms 
of pain; and in his last moments he complained that the veins 
of his heart throbbed with the poison of Khaibar. He experi¬ 
enced kinder treatment at the hands of Safiya (or Sophia), 
another female captive, who had still greater motives for ven¬ 
geance than Zainab; for she was the recently espoused wife of 
Kenana, who had just been sacrificed for his wealth, and she 
was the daughter of Hoya Ibn Akhtab, prince of the Beni 
Koraida, who, with seven hundred of his people, had been put 
to death in the square of Medina, as has been related. 

This Safiya was of great beauty; it is not surprising, there 
fore, that she should find instant favor in the eyes of Mahomet, 
and that he should seek, as usual, to add her to his harem; but 
it may occasion surprise that she should contemplate such a lot 
with complacency. Moslem writers, however, explain this by 
assuring us that she was supernaturally prepared for the event. 

While Mahomet was yefc encamped before the city, and carry¬ 
ing on the siege, she had a vision of the night, in which the sun 
descended from the firmament and nestled in her bosom. On 
recounting her dream to her husband Kenana in the morning, 
he smote her on the face, exclaiming, “ Woman, you speak in 
parables of this Arab chief who has come against us.” 

The vision of Safiya was made true, for having converted her 
with all decent haste to the faith of Islam, Mahomet took her 


138 


MAHOMET AMD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


to wife before he left Khaibar. Their nuptials took place on 
the homeward march, at A1 Saliba, where the army halted for 
three days. Abu Ayub, one of the prophet’s most ardent dis¬ 
ciples and marshal of his household, patrolled around the nup¬ 
tial tent throughout the night, sword in hand. Safiya was 
one of the most favored wives of Mahomet, w T hom she survived 
for forty years of widowhood. 

Besides the marriages of affection which we have recorded, 
the prophet, about this time, made another of policy. Shortly 
after his return to Medina he was gladdened by the arrival, 
from Abyssinia, of the residue of the fugitives. Among these 
was a comely widow, thirty years of age, whose husband, Ab¬ 
dallah, had died while in exile. She was generally known by 
the name of Omm Habiba, the mother of Habiba, from a 
daughter to whom she had given birth. This widow was the 
daughter of Mahomet’s arch enemy, Abu Sofian; and the 
prophet conceived that a marriage with the daughter might 
soften the hostility of the father; a politic consideration, 
which is said to have been either suggested or sanctioned by a 
revelation of a chapter of the Koran. 

When Abu Sofian heard of the espousals, “By heaven,” ex¬ 
claimed he, “this camel is so rampant that no muzzle can 
restrain him.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

MISSIONS TO VARIOUS PRINCES; TO HERACLIUS; TO KHOSRU II. ; 

TO THE PREFECT OF EGYPT—THEIR RESULT. 

During the residue of the year Mahomet remained at 
Medina, sending forth his trusty disciples, by this time experi¬ 
enced captains, on various military expeditions; by which 
refractory tribes were rapidly brought into subjection. His 
views as a statesman widened as his territories increased. 
Though he professed, in cases of necessity, to propagate his 
religion by the sword, he was not neglectful of the peaceful 
measures of diplomacy, and sent envoys to various princes 
and potentates, whose dominions bordered on his political 
horizon, urging them to embrace the faith of Islam; which was, 
in effect, to acknowledge him, through his apostolic office, 
their superior. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


139 


Two of the most noted of these missions were to Khosru II., 
king of Persia, and Heraclius, the Roman emperor, at Constan¬ 
tinople. The wars between the Romans and the Persians, for 
the dominion of the East, which had prevailed from time to 
time through several centuries, had been revived by these two 
potentates with varying fortunes, and for several years past 
had distracted the eastern world. Countries had been overrun 
by either power- states and kingdoms had changed hands 
under alternate invasions, and according to the conquests and 
defeats of the warring parties. At one time Khosru with three 
armies, one vauntingly called the Fifty Thousand Golden 
Spears, had wrested Palestine, Cappadocia, Armenia, and 
several other great and wealthy provinces from the Roman 
emperor; had made himself master of Jerusalem, and carried 
off the Holy Cross to Persia; had invaded Africa, conquered 
Libya and Egypt, and extended his victories even to Carthage. 

In the midst of his triumphant career, a Moslem envoy 
arrived bearing him a letter from Mahomet. Khosru sent for 
his secretary or interpreter, and ordered him to read it. The 
letter began as follows: 

“In the name of the most merciful God! Mahomet, son of 
Abdallah, and apostle of God, to Khosru, king of Persia.” 

“What!” cried Khosru, starting up in haughty indignation, 
“ does one who is my slave dare to put his name first in writ¬ 
ing to me?” So saying, he seized the letter and tore it in pieces 
without seeking to know its contents. He then wrote to his 
viceroy in Yemen, saying, “I am told there is in Medina a 
madman, of the tribe of Koreish, who pretends to be a prophet. 
Restore him to his senses; or if you cannot, send me his head.” 

When Mahomet was told how Khosru had torn his letter, 
“ Even so,” said he, “ shall Allah rend his empire in pieces.” 

The letter from the prophet to Heraclius was more favorably 
received, reaching him probably during his reverses. It was 
.signed in characters of silver, Mahomet Azzarel, Mahomet the 
messenger of God, and invited the emperor to renounce Chris¬ 
tianity, and embrace the faith of Islam. Heraclius, we are 
told, deposited the epistle respectfully upon his pillow, treated 
the envoy with distinction, and dismissed him with magnifi¬ 
cent presents. Engrossed, however, by his Persian wars, he 
paid no further attention to this mission, from one whom he 
probably considered a mere Arab fanatic; nor attached suffi¬ 
cient importance to his military operations, which may have 
appeared mere predatory forays of the wild tribes of the desert, 


140 


MAHOMET AM) T1IS SUCCESSORS. 


Another mission of Mahomet was to the Mukowkis, or 
governor of Egypt, who had originally been sent there by 
Heraclius to collect tribute; but who, availing himself of the 
confusion produced by the wars between the Romans and Per¬ 
sians, had assumed sovereign power, and nearly thrown off aLl 
allegiance to the emperor. He received the envoy with signal 
honor, but evaded a direct reply to the invitation to embrace 
the faith, observing that it was a grave matter requiring much 
consideration. In the mean time he sent presents to Mahomet 
of precious jewels; garments of Egyptian linen; exquisite 
honey and butter; a white she-ass, called Yafur; a white mule, 
called Daldal, and a fleet horse called Lazlos, or the Prancer. 
The most acceptable of his presents, however, were two Coptic 
damsels, sisters, called Mariyah (or Mary), and Shiren. 

The beauty of Mariyah caused great perturbation in the 
mind of the prophet. He would fain have made her his con¬ 
cubine, but was impeded by his own law in the seventeenth 
chapter of the Koran, ordaining that fornication should be 
punished with stripes. 

He was relieved from his dilemma by another revelation 
revoking the law in regard to himself alone, allowing him 
intercourse with his handmaid. It remained in full force, 
however, against all other Moslems. Still, to avoid scandal, 
and above all, not to excite the jealousy of his wives, he carried 
on his intercourse with the beautiful Mariyah in secret; which 
may be one reason why she remained long a favorite. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

MAHOMET’S PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA; HIS MARRIAGE WITH MAIM- 
UNA—KHALED IBN AL WALED AND AMRU IBN AL AASS BECOME 
PROSELYTES. 

The time had now arrived when, by treaty with the Koreish- 
ites, Mahomet and his followers were permitted to make a 
pilgrimage to Mecca, and pass three days unmolested at the 
sacred shrines. He departed accordingly with a numerous and 
well-armed host, and seventy camels for sacrifices. His old 
adversaries would fain have impeded his progress, but they 
were overawed, and on his approach withdrew silently to the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


141 


neighboring hills. On entering the bounds of Mecca, the 
pilgrims, according to compact and usage, laid aside all their 
warlike accoutrements excepting their swords, which they 
carried sheathed. 

Great was their joy on beholding once more the walls and 
towers of the sacred city. They entered the gates in pilgrim 
garb, with devout and thankful hearts, and Mahomet per¬ 
formed all the ancient and customary rites, with a zeal and 
devotion which gratified beholders, and drew to him many 
converts. When he had complied with all the ceremonials he 
threw aside the Irani or pilgrim’s garb, and withdrew to Sarif, 
a hamlet two leagues distant, and without the sacred bounda¬ 
ries. Here he had a ceremonial of a different kind to perform, 
but one in which he was prone to act with unfeigned devotion. 
It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter 
of A1 Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her 
on his arrival at Mecca, but had postponed the nuptials until 
after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was 
doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty- 
one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him 
two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a 
nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near 
destroying Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became 
one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his 
prowess obtained the appellation of “The Sword of God.” 

The other proselyte was Khaled’s friend Amru Ibn al Aass, 
the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the 
commencement of his prophetic career; who had been an 
ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to 
obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was 
henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into 
foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed. 


Note.— Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her 
marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavi¬ 
lion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been 
pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles him¬ 
self “a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy 
of God,” visited her tomb on returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of 
the Hegira 9G3, a.d. 1555. “ I saw there,” said he, 41 a dome of black marble erected 
in memory of Maimuna, on the very spot on which the apostle of God had reposed 
with her. God knows the truth! and also the reason of the black color of the stone. 
There is a place of ablution, and an oratory; but the building has fallen to decay.” 


142 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A MOSLEM ENVOY SLAIN IN SYRIA—EXPEDITION TO AVENGE III3 
DEATH—BATTLE OF MUTA—ITS RESULTS. 

Among the different missions which had been sent by 
Mahomet beyond the bounds of Arabia to invite neighboring 
princes to embrace his religion, was one to the governor of 
Bosra, the great mart on the confines of Syria, to which he had 
made his first caravan journey in the days of his youth. 
Syria had been alternately under Roman and Persian domina¬ 
tion, but was at that time subject to the emperor, though prob¬ 
ably in a great state of confusion. The envoy of Mahomet was 
slain at Muta, a town about three days’ journey eastward from 
Jerusalem. The one who slew him was an Arab of the Chris¬ 
tian tribe of Gassan, and son to Shorhail, an emir, who gov¬ 
erned Muta in the name of Heraciius. 

To revenge the death of his legate, and to insure respect to 
his envoys in future, Mahomet prepared to send an army of 
three thousand men against the offending city. It was a mo¬ 
mentous expedition, as it might, for the first time, bring the 
arms of Islam in collision with those of the Roman Empire; 
but Mahomet presumed upon his growing power, the energy of 
his troops, and the disordered state of Syrian affairs. The 
command was intrusted to his freedman Zeid, who had given 
such signal proof of devotion in surrendering to him his 
beautiful wife Zeinab. Several chosen officers were associated 
with him. One was Mahomet’s cousin Jaafar, son of Abu 
Taleb, and brother of Ali, the same who, by his eloquence, had 
vindicated the doctrines of Islam before the king of Abyssinia, 
and defeated the Koreish embassy. He was now in the prime 
of life, and noted for great courage and manly beauty. An¬ 
other of the associate officers was Abdallah Ibn Idawaha, the 
poet, but who had signalized himself in arms as well as poetry. 
A third was the new proselyte Khaied, wh joined the expedi¬ 
tion as a volunteer, being eager to prove by his sword the 
sincerity of his conversion. 

The orders to Zeid were to march rapidly, so as to come upon 
Muta by surprise, to summon the inhabitants to embrace the 

faith, and to treat them with lenity. Women, children, monks, 


MAH0ME2 AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 143 

and the blind were to be spared at all events; nor were any 
houses to be destroyed, nor trees cut down. 

The little army sallied from Medina in the full confidence of 
coming upon the enemy unawares. On their march, however, 
they learned that a greatly superior force of Romans, or rather 
Greeks and Arabs, was advancing to meet them. A council of 
war was called. Some were for pausing, and awaiting further 
orders from Mahomet; but Abdallah, the poet, was for pushing 
fearlessly forward without regard to numbers. “We fight for 
the faith!” cried he; “if we fall, paradise is our reward. On, 
then, to victory or martyrdom!” 

All caught a spark of the poet’s fire, or rather, fanaticism. 
They met the enemy near Muta, and encountered them with 
fury rather than valor. In the heat of the conflict Zeid re* 
ceived a mortal wound. The sacred banner was falling from 
his grasp, but was seized and borne aloft by Jaafar. The 
battle thickened round him, for the banner was the object of 
fierce contention. He defended it with desperate valor. The 
hand by which he held it was struck off; he grasped it with 
the other. That, too, was severed; he embraced it with his 
bleeding arms. A blow from a scimetar cleft his skull; he 
sank dead upon the field, still clinging to the standard of the 
faith. Abdallah the poet next reared the banner; but he too 
fell beneath the sword. Khaled, the new convert, seeing the 
three Moslem leaders slain, now grasped the fatal standard, 
but in his hand it remained aloft. His voice rallied the waver¬ 
ing Moslems; his powerful arm cut its way through the thick¬ 
est of the enemy. If his own account may be credited, and he 
was one whose deeds needed no exaggeration, nine scimetars 
were broken in his hand by the fury of the blows given by him 
in this deadly conflict. 

Night separated the combatants. In the morning Khaled, 
whom the army acknowledged as their commander, proved 
himself as wary as he was valiant. By dint of marches and 
counter-marches he presented his forces in so many points of 
view that the enemy were deceived as to his number, and sup¬ 
posed he had received a strong reinforcement. At his first 
charge, therefore, they retreated; their retreat soon became a 
flight, in which they were pursued with great slaughter. 
Khaled then plundered their camp, in which was found great 
booty. Among the slain in the field of battle was found the 
body of Jaafar, covered with wounds, but all in front. Out of 
respect to his valor, and to his relationship with the prophet, 


144 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Khaled ordered that his corpse should not be buried on the 
spot, but borne back for honorable interment at Medina. 

The army, on its return, though laden with spoil, entered the 
city more like a funeral train than a triumphant pageant, and 
was received with mingled shouts and lamentations. While 
fche people rejoiced in the success of their arms, they mourned 
the loss of three of their favorite generals. All bewailed the 
fate of Jaafar, brought home a ghastly corpse to that city 
whence they had so recently seen him sally forth in all the 
pride of valiant manhood, the admiration of every beholder. 
He had left behind him a beautiful wife and infant son. The 
heart of Mahomet was touched by her affliction. He took the 
orphan child in his arms and bathed it with his tears. But 
most he was affected when he beheld the young daughter of his 
faithful Zeid approaching him. He fell on her neck and wept 
in speechless emotion. A bystander expressed surprise that he 
should give way to tears for a death which, according to Mos¬ 
lem doctrine, was but a passport to paradise. “ Alas!” replied 
the prophet, “these are the tears of friendship for the loss of a 
friendS” 

The obsequies ot Jaafar were performed on the third day 
after the arrival of the army. By that time Mahomet had re¬ 
covered his self-possession, and was again the prophet. He 
gently rebuked the passionate lamentations of the multitude, 
taking occasion to inculcate one of the most politic and consol¬ 
atory doctrines of his creed. “ Weep no more,” said he, “over 
the death of this my brother. In place of the two hands lost 
in defending the standard of the faith, two wings have been 
given him to bear him to paradise; there to enjoy the endless 
delights insured to all believers who fall in battle.” 

It was in consequence of the prowess and generalship dis¬ 
played by Khaled in this perilous fight that he was honored by 
Mahomet with the appellation of* “T^e Sword of God,” bt 
which he was afterward renowned. 


MAHOMET AiYl) HIS SUCCESSORS. 


145 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

DESIGNS UPON MECCA—MISSION OF ABU SOFIAN—ITS RESULT. 

Mahomet, by force either of arms or eloquence, had now ac¬ 
quired dominion over a great number of the Arabian tribes. He 
had many thousand warriors under his command; sons of the 
desert, inured to hunger, thirst, and the scorching rays of the 
sun, and to whom war was a sport rather than a toil. He had 
corrected their intemperance, disciplined their valor, and sub¬ 
jected them to rule. Repeated victories had given them con¬ 
fidence in themselves and in their leader, whose standard they 
followed with the implicit obedience of soldiers and the blind 
fanaticism of disciples. 

The views of Mahomet expanded with his means, and a grand 
enterprise now opened upon his mind. Mecca, his native city 
the abode of his family for generations, the scene of his hap¬ 
piest years, was still in the hands of his implacable foes. The 
Caaba, the object of devotion and pilgrimage to all the children 
of Ishmael, the shrine of his earliest worship, was still pro¬ 
faned by the emblems and rites of idolatry. To plant the 
standard of the faith on the walls of his native city, to rescue 
the holy house from profanation, restore it to the spiritual 
worship of the one true God, and make it the rallying point of 
Islamism, formed now the leading object of his ambition. 

The treaty of peace existing with the Koreishites was an im¬ 
pediment to any military enterprise; but some casual feuds 
and skirmishings soon gave a pretext for charging them with 
having violated the treaty stipulations. The Koreishites had 
by this time learned to appreciate and dread the rapidly in¬ 
creasing power of the Moslems, and were eager to explain 
away, or atone for, the quarrels and misdeeds of a few heed¬ 
less individuals. They even prevailed on their leader, Abu 
Sofian, to repair to Medina as ambassador of peace, trusting 
that he might have some influence with the prophet through 
his daughter Omm Habiba. 

It was a sore trial to this haughty chief to come almost a 
suppliant to the man whom he had scoffed at as an impostor, 
and treated with inveterate hostility; and his proud spirit was 
doomed to still further mortification, for Mahomet, judging 


146 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSOBS. 


from his errand of the weakness of Lis party, and being se¬ 
cretly bent on war, vouchsafed him no reply. 

Repressing his rage, Abu Sofian sought the intermediation of 
Abu Beker, of Omar, and Ali; but they all rebuked and re¬ 
pulsed him; for they knew the secret wishes of Mahomet. 
He next endeavored to secure the favor of Fatima, the daugh¬ 
ter of Mahomet and wife of Ali, by flattering a mother’s 
pride, entreating her to let her son Hasan, a child but six 
years old, be his protector; but Fatima answered haughtily, 
“My son is too young to be a protector; and no protection can 
avail against the will of the prophet of God.” Even his daugh¬ 
ter, Omm Habiba, the wife of Mahomet, on whom Abu Sofian 
had calculated for influence, added to his mortification, for on 
his offering to seat himself on a mat in her dwelling, she has¬ 
tily folded it up, exclaiming, “It is the bed of the prophet 
of God, and too sacred to be made the resting-place of an 
idolater.” 

The cup of humiliation was full to overflowing, and in the 
bitterness of his heart Abu Sofian cursed his daughter. He 
now turned again to Ali, beseeching his advice in the desperate 
state of his embassy. 

“ I can advise nothing better,” replied Ali, “than for thee to 
promise, as the head of the Koreishites, a continuance of thy 
protection; and then to return to thy home. ” 

“But thinkest thou that promise will be of any avail?” 

“I think not,” replied Ali dryly; “but I know not to the 
contrary. ” 

In pursuance of this advice, Abu Sofian repaired to the 
mosque, and made public declaration, in behalf of the Koreish¬ 
ites, that on their part the treaty of peace should be faith¬ 
fully maintained; after which he returned to Mecca, deeply 
humiliated by the imperfect result' of his mission. He was re¬ 
ceived with scoffs by the Koreishites, who observed that his 
declaration of peace availed nothing without the concurrence 
of Mahomet, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


147 


CHAPTER XXX. 

SURPRISE AND CAPTURE OF MECCA. 

Mahomet now prepared for a secret expedition to take Mecca 
by surprise. His allies were summoned from all quarters to 
Medina; but no intimation was given of the object he had in 
view. All the roads leading to Mecca were barred to prevent 
any intelligence of his movements being carried to the Korcish- 
ites. With all his precautions the secret came near being 
discovered. Among his followers, fugitives from Mecca, was 
one named Hateb, whose family had remained behind, and 
were without connections or friends to take an interest in 
their welfare. Hateb now thought to gain favor for them 
among the Koreishites, by betraying the plans of Mahomet. 
He accordingly wrote a letter revealing the intended enter¬ 
prise, and gave it in charge to a singing woman, named Sara, 
a Haschemite slave, who undertook to carry it to Mecca. 

She was already on the road when Mahomet was apprised of 
the treachery. Ali and five others, well mounted, were sent 
in pursuit of the messenger. They soon overtook her, but 
searched her person in vain. Most of them would have given 
up the search and turned back, but Ali was confident that 
the prophet of God could not be mistaken nor misinformed. 
Drawing his scimetar, he swore to strike off the head of the 
messenger, unless the letter were produced. The threat was 
effectual. She drew forth the letter from among her hair. 

Hateb, on being taxed with his perfidy, acknowledged it, but 
pleaded his anxiety to secure favor for his destitute family, 
and his certainty that the letter would be harmless, and of 
no avail against the purposes of the apostle of God. Omar 
spurned at his excuses, and would have struck off his head; 
but Mahomet, calling to mind that Hateb had fought bravely 
in support of the faith in the battle of the Beder, admitted his 
excuses and forgave him. 

The prophet departed with ten thousand men on this mo¬ 
mentous enterprise. Omar, who had charge of regulating the 
march and appointing the encampments, led the army by 
lonely passes of the mountains; prohibiting the sound of atta- 
bal or trumpet, or anything else that could betray their move' 


148 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


ments. While on the march Mahomet was joined by his 
uncle A1 Abbas, who had come forth with his family from 
Mecca, to rally under the standard of the faith. Mahomet re¬ 
ceived him graciously, yet with a hint at his tardiness. “ Thou 
art the last of the emigrants,” said he, “as I am the last of 
the prophets.” A1 Abbas sent his family forward to Medina, 
while he turned and accompanied the expedition. The army 
reached the valley of Marr Azzahran, near to the sacred city, 
without being discovered. It was nightfall when they silently 
pitched their tents, and now Omar for the first time permitted 
them to light their watchfires. 

In the mean time, though A1 Abbas had joined the standard 
of the faith in all sincerity, yet he was sorely disquieted at 
seeing his nephew advancing against Mecca with such a pow¬ 
erful force and such hostile intent, and feared the entire de¬ 
struction of the Koreishites, unless they could be persuaded in 
time to capitulate. In the dead of the night he mounted Ma¬ 
homet’s white mule Fadda, and rode forth to reconnoitre. In 
skirting the camp he heard the tramp of men and sound of 
voices. A scouting party were bringing in two prisoners cap¬ 
tured near the city. A1 Abbas approached, and found the 
captives to be Abu Sofian and one of his captains. They were 
conducted to the watchfire of Omar, who recognized Abu 
Sofian by the light. “ God be praised,” cried lie, “that I have 
such an enemy in my hands, and without conditions.” His 
ready scimetar might have given fatal significance to his 
words, had not Al Abbas stepped forward and taken Abu 
Sofian under his protection, until the will of the prophet 
should be known. Omar rushed forth to ascertain that will, 
or rather to demand the life of the prisoner; but Al Abbas, 
taking the latter up behind him, put spurs to his mule, and 
was the first to reach the tent of the prophet, followed hard by 
Omar, clamoring for the head of Abu Sofian. 

Mahomet thus beheld in his power his inveterate enemy, who 
had driven him from his home and country, and persecuted 
his family and friends; but he beheld in him the father of his 
wife Omm Habiba, and felt inclined to clemency. He post¬ 
poned all decision in the matter until morning, giving Abu 
Sofian in charge of Al Abbas. 

When the captain was brought before him on the following 
day, “Well, Abu Sofian,” cried he, “is it not at length time 
to know that there is no other God but God?” 

“That I already knew,” replied Abu Sofian. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 149 

£< Good! and is it not time for thee to acknowledge me as the 
apostle of God?” 

“Dearer art thou tome than my father and my mother,” 
replied Abu Sofian, using an oriental phrase of compliment; 
“but I am not yet prepared to acknowledge thee a prophet.” 

“Out upon thee!” cried Omar, “testify instantly to the 
truth, or thy head shall be severed from thy body.” 

To these threats were added the counsels and entreaties of A1 
Abbas, who showed himself a real friend in need. The rancor 
of Abu Sofian had already been partly subdued by the unex- 
pected mildness of Mahomet; so, making a merit of necessity, 
he acknowledged the divinity of his mission; furnishing an il¬ 
lustration of the Moslem maxim, “ To convince stubborn unbe¬ 
lievers there is no argument like the sword.” 

Having now embraced the faith, Abu Sofian obtained favor¬ 
able terms for the people of Mecca, in case of their submission. 
None were to be harmed who should remain quietly in their 
houses; or should take refuge in the houses of Abu Sofian and 
Hakim; or under the banner of Abu Rawaiha. 

That Abu Sofian might take back to the city a proper idea of 
the force brought against it, he was stationed with A1 Abbas 
at a narrow defile where the whole army passed in review. As 
the various Arab tribes marched by with their different arms 
and ensigns, A1 Abbas explained the name and country of 
each. Abu Sofian was surprised at the number, discipline, and 
equipment of the troops; for the Moslems had been rapidly im¬ 
proving in the means and art of war; but when Mahomet ap¬ 
proached, in the midst of a chosen guard, armed at all points 
and glittering with steel, his astonishment passed all bounds. 
“ There is no withstanding this!” cried lie to A1 Abbas, with an 
oath—“ truly thy nephew wields a mighty power.” 

“ Even so,” replied the other; “return then to thy people; 
provide for their safety, and warn them not to oppose the 
apostle of God.” 

Abu Sofian hastened back to Mecca, and assembling the in¬ 
habitants, told them of the mighty host at hand, led on by Ma¬ 
homet ; of the favorable terms offered in case of their submis¬ 
sion, and of the vanity of all resistance. As Abu Sofian had 
been the soul of the opposition to Mahomet and his doctrines, 
his words had instant effect in producing acquiescence in an 
event which seemed to leave no alternative. The greater part 
of the inhabitants, therefore, prepared to witness, without re- 
3 istance, the entry of the prophet. 


150 


MAHOMET AND JITS SUCCESSORS. 


Mahomet, in the mean time, who knew not what resistance 
he might meet with, made a careful distribution of his forces as 
he approached the city. While the main body marched direct¬ 
ly forward, strong detachments advanced over the hills on each 
side. To Ali, who commanded a large body of cavalry, was 
confided the sacred banner, which he was to plant on Mount 
Hadjun, and maintain it there until joined by the prophet. 
Express orders were given to all the generals to practise for¬ 
bearance, and in no instance to make the first attack; for it 
was the earnest desire of Mahomet to win Mecca by modera¬ 
tion and clemency, rather than subdue it by violence. It is 
true, ali who offered armed resistance were to be cut down, but 
none were to be harmed who submitted quietly. Overhearing 
one of his captains exclaim, in the heat of his zeal, that “ no 
place was sacred on the day of battle,” he instantly appointed 
a cooler-headed commander in his place. 

The main body of the army advanced without molestation. 
Mahomet brought up the rear-guard, clad in a scarlet vest, and 
mounted on his favorite camel A1 Kaswa. He proceeded but 
slowly, however; his movements being impeded by the im¬ 
mense multitude which thronged around him. Arrived on 
Mount Hadjun, where Ali had planted the standard of the 
faith, a tent was pitched for him. Here he alighted, put off 
his scarlet garment, and assumed the black turban and the pil¬ 
grim garb. Casting a look down into the plain, however, he 
beheld, with grief and indignation, the gleam of swords and 
lances, and Khaled, who commanded the left wing, in a full 
career of carnage. His troops, composed of Arab tribes con¬ 
verted to the faith, had been galled by a flight of arrows from 
a body of Koreishites; whereupon the fiery warrior charged 
into the thickest of them with sword and lance; his troops 
pressed after him; they put the enemy to flight, entered the 
gates of Mecca pell-mell with them, and nothing but the swift 
commands of Mahomet preserved the city from a general 
massacre. 

The carnage being stopped, and no further opposition mani¬ 
fested, the prophet descended from the mount and approached 
the gates, seated on his camel, accompanied by Abu Beker on 
his right hand, and followed by Osama, the son of Zeid. The 
sun was just rising as he entered the gates of his native city, 
with the glory of a conqueror, but the garb and humility of a 
pilgrim. He entered, repeating verses of the Koran, which ho 
said had been revealed to him at Medina, and were prophetic 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS ' 


151 


of the event. He triumphed in the spirit of a religious zealot, 
not of a warrior. “ Unto God,” said he, “belong the hosts of 
heaven and earth, and God is mighty and wise. Now hath 
God verified unto his apostle the vision, wherein he said, ye 
shall surely enter the holy temple of Mecca in full security.” 

Without dismounting, Mahomet repaired directly to the 
Caaba, the scene of his early devotions, the sacred shrine of 
worship since the days of the patriarchs, and which he regarded 
as the primitive temple of the one true God. Here he made 
the seven circuits round the sacred edifice, a reverential rite 
from the days of religious purity; with the same devout feel¬ 
ing he each time touched the black stone with his staff; regard¬ 
ing it as a holy relic. He would have entered the Caaba, but 
Othman Ibn Talha, the ancient custodian, locked the door. 
Ah snatched the keys, but Mahomet caused them to be returned 
to the venerable officer, and so won him by his kindness that 
he not merely threw open the doors, but subsequently em¬ 
braced the faith of Islam; whereupon he was continued in his 
office. 

Mahomet now proceeded to execute the great object of his 
religious aspirations, the purifying of the sacred edifice , from 
the symbols of idolatry, with which it was crowded. All the 
idols in and about it, to the number of three hundred and 
sixty, were thrown down and destroyed. Among these the 
most renowned was Hobal, an idol brought from Balka, in 
Syria, and fabled to have the power of granting rain. It was, 
of course, a great object of worship among the inhabitants of 
the thirsty desert. There were statues of Abraham and Ish- 
maef also, represented with divining arrows in their hands; 
“an outrage on their memories,” said Mahomet, “being sym¬ 
bols of a diabolical art which they had never practised.” In 
reverence of their memories, therefore, these statues were 
demolished. There were paintings, also, depicting angels in 
the guise of beautiful women. ‘The angels,” said Mahomet 
indignantly, “are no such beings. There are celestial houris 
provided in paradise for the solace of true believers; but angels 
are ministering spirits of the Most High, and of too pure a 
nature to admit of sex.” The paintings were accordingly 
obliterated. 

Even a dove, curiously carved of wood, he broke with his 
own hands, and cast upon the ground, as savoring of idolatry. 

From the Caaba he proceeded' to the well of Zem Zem. It 
was sacred in his eyes, from his belief that it was the identical 


152 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


well revealed by the angel to Hagar and Ishmael, in their ex¬ 
tremity ; he considered the rite connected with it as pure and 
holy, and continued it in his faith. As he approached the 
well, his uncle A1 Abbas presented him a cruse of the wat r, 
that he might drink, and make the customary ablution. n 
commemoration of this pious act, he appointed his ur le 
guardian of the cup of the well; an office of sacred dignify, 
which his descendants retain to this day. 

At noon one of his followers, at his command, summoned 
the people to prayer from the top of the Caaba, a custom con 
tinued ever since throughout Mahometan countries, from 
minarets or towers provided in every mosque. He also estab¬ 
lished the Kebla, toward which the faithful in every part of 
the world should turn their faces in prayer. 

He afterward addressed the people in a kind of sermon, set¬ 
ting forth his principal doctrines, and announcing the triumph 
of the faith as a fulfilment of prophetic promise. Shouts burst 
from the multitude in reply. “Allah Achbar! ' God is great!” 
cried they. “There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his 
prophet.” 

The religious ceremonials being ended, Mahomet took his 
station on the hill A1 Safa, and the people of Mecca, male and 
female, passed before him, taking the oath of fidelity to him 
as the prophet of God, and renouncing idolatry. This was in 
compliance with a revelation in the Koran: “ God hath sent 
his apostle with the direction, and the religion of truth that 
he may exalt the same over every religion. Verily, they who 
swear fealty to him, swear fealty unto God; the hand of God 
is over their hands.” In the midst of his triumph, however, 
ho rejected all homage paid exclusively to himself, and all 
regal authority. “ Why dost thou tremble?” said he, to a man 
who approached with timid and faltering steps. “ Of what 
dost thou stand in awe? I am no king, but the son of a 
Koreishite woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun.” 

His lenity was equally conspicuous. The once haughty 
chiefs of the Koreishites appeared with abject countenances 
before the man they had persecuted, for their lives were in his 
power. 

“What can you expect at my hands?” demanded he sternly. 

“ Mercy, oh generous brother! Mercy, oh son of a generous 
line!” 

“Be it so!” cried he, with a mixture of scorn and pity. 
M Away! begone! ye are free!” 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


153 


Some of his followers who had shared his persecutions were 
di pointed in their anticipations of a bloody revenge, and 
murmured at his clemency; but he persisted in it, and estab¬ 
lished Mecca as an inviolable sanctuary, or place of refuge, so 
to continue until the final resurrection. He reserved to him¬ 
self, however, the right on the present occasion, and during 
that special day, to punish a few of the people of the city, who 
had grievously offended, and been expressly proscribed; yet 
even these, for the most part, were ultimately forgiven. 

Among the Koreishite women who advanced to take the 
oath he descried Henda, the wife of Abu Sofian; the savage 
woman who had animated the infidels at the battle of Ohod, 
and had gnawed the heart of Hamza, in revenge for the death 
of her father. On the present occasion she had disguised her¬ 
self to escape detection; but seeing the eyes of the prophet 
fixed on her, she threw herself at his feet, exclaiming, “ I am 
Henda: pardon! pardon!” Mahomet pardoned her—and was 
requited for his clemency by her making his doctrines the sub¬ 
ject of contemptuous sarcasms. 

Among those destined to punishment was Wacksa, the 
Ethiopian, who had slain Hamza; but he had fled from Mecca 
on the entrance of the army. At a subsequent period he pre¬ 
sented himself before the prophet, and made the profession of 
faith before he was recognized. He was forgiven, and made 
to relate the particulars of the death of Hamza; after which 
Mahomet dismissed him with an injunction never again to 
come into his presence. He survived until the time of the 
Caliphat of Omar, during whose reign he was repeatedly 
scourged for drunkenness. 

Another of the proscribed was Abdallah Ibn Saad, a young 
Koreishite, distinguished for wit and humor as well as for 
warlike accomplishments. As he held the pen of a ready 
writer, Mahomet had employed him to reduce the revelations 
of the Koran to writing. In so doing he had often altered and 
amended the text; nay, it was discovered that, through care¬ 
lessness or design, he had occasionally falsified it, and ren¬ 
dered it absurd. He had even made his alterations and 
amendments matter of scoff and jest among his companions, 
observing that if the Koran proved Mahomet to be a prophet, 
he himself must be half a prophet. His interpolations being 
detected, he had fled from the wrath of the prophet, and re¬ 
turned to Mecca, where he relapsed into idolatry. On the cap¬ 
ture of the city his foster-brother concealed him in his house 


154 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


until the tumult had subsided, when he led him into the pres¬ 
ence of the prophet, and supplicated for his pardon. This 
was the severest trial of the lenity of Mahomet. The offender 
had betrayed his confidence; held him up to ridicule; ques¬ 
tioned iiis apostolic mission, and struck at the very foundation 
of his faith. For some time he maintained a stern silence, 
hoping, as he afterward declared, some zealous disciple might 
strike off the offender’s head. No one, however, stirred: so, 
yielding to the entreaties of Othman, he granted a pardon. 
Abdallah instantly renewed his profession of faith, and con¬ 
tinued a good Mussulman. His name will be found in the 
wars of the Caliphs. He was one of the most dexterous horse¬ 
men of his tribe, and evinced his ruling passion to the last, for 
he died repeating the hundredth chapter of the Koran, entitled 
‘‘ The war steeds.” Perhaps it was one which had experienced 
his interpolations. 

Another of the proscribed was Akrema Ibn Abu Jahl, who 
on many occasions had manifested a deadly hostility to the 
prophet, inherited from his father. On the entrance of Ma¬ 
homet into Mecca, Akrema threw himself upon a fleet horse, 
and escaped by an opposite gate, leaving behind him a beauti¬ 
ful wife, Omm Hakem, to whom he was recently married. 
She embraced the faith of Islam, but soon after learnt that, 
her husband, in attempting to escape by sea to Yemen, had 
been driven back to port. Hastening to the presence of the 
prophet, she threw herself on her knees before him, loose, di¬ 
shevelled, and unveiled, and implored grace for her husband. 
The prophet, probably more moved by her beauty than her 
grief, raised her gently from the earth, and told her her prayer 
was granted. Hurrying to the seaport, she arrived just as the 
vessel in which her husband had embarked was about to sail. 
She returned, mounted behind him, to Mecca, and brought 
him, a true believer, into the presence of the prophet. On this 
occasion, however, she was so closely veiled that her dark ey^es 
alone were visible. Mahomet received Akrcma’s profession of 
faith; made him commander of a battalion of Hawazenites, as 
the dower of his beautiful and devoted wife, and bestowed lib¬ 
eral donations on the youthful couple. Like many other con¬ 
verted enemies, Akrema proved a valiant soldier in the wars 
of the faith, and after signalizing himself on various occasions, 
fell in battle, hacked and pierced by swords and lances. 

The whole conduct of Mahomet, on gaining possession of 
Mecca, showed* that it was a religious more than a military 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


155 


triumph. His heart, too, softened toward his native place, 
now that it was in his power; his resentments were extin¬ 
guished by success, and his inclinations were all toward for¬ 
giveness. 

The Ansarians, or Auxiliaries of Medina, who had aided him 
in his campaign, began to fear that its success might prove 
fatal to their own interests. They watched him anxiously, as 
one day, after praying on the hill A1 Safa, he sat gazing down 
wistfully upon Mecca, the scene of his early struggles and 
recent glory: “Verily,” said he, “thou art the best of cities, 
and the most beloved of Allah! Had I not been driven out 
from thee by my own tribe, never would I have left thee!” 
On hearing this, the Ansarians said, one to another, “Behold! 
Mahomet is conqueror and master of his native city; he will, 
doubtless, establish himself here, and forsake Medina!” Their 
words reached his ear, and he turned to them with reproach¬ 
ful warmth: “No!” cried he, “ when you plighted to me your 
allegiance, I swore to live and die with you. I should not act 
as the servant of God, nor as his ambassador, were I to leave 
you.” 

He acted according to his words, and Medina, which had 
been his city of refuge, continued to be his residence to his 
dying day. 

Mahomet did not content himself with purifying the Caaba 
and abolishing idolatry from Iris native city; he sent forth his 
captains at the head of armed bands, to cast down the idols of 
different tribes set up in the neighboring towns and vihages, 
and to convert their worshippers to his faith. 

Of all these military apostles, none was so zealous as Khaled, 
whose spirit was still fermenting with recent conversion. 
Arriving at Naklah, the resort of the idolatrous Korcishites, to 
worship at the shrine of Uzza, he penetrated the sacred grove, 
laid waste the temple, and cast the idol to the ground. A hor¬ 
rible hag, black and naked, with dishevelled hair, rushed forth, 
shrieking and wringing her hands; but Khaled severed her 
through the middle with one blow of his scimetar. He 
reported the deed to Mahomet, expressing a doubt whether 
she were priestess or evil spirit. “ Of a truth, ” replied the pro¬ 
phet, “ it was Uzza herself whom thou hast destroyed.” 

On a similar errand into the neighboring province of Teha¬ 
ma, Khaled had with him three hundred and fifty men, some 
of them of the tribe of Suleim, and was accompanied by Ab- 
da’lrahman, one of the earliest proselytes of*the faith. His 


156 


MAHOMET AM) JUS SUCCESSORS. 


instructions from the prophet were to preach peace and good¬ 
will, to inculcate the faith, and to abstain from violence, 
unless assailed. When about two days’ journey on his way to 
Tehama, he had to pass through the country of the tribe of 
Jadsima. Most of the inhabitants had embraced the faith, 
but some were still of the Sabean religion. On a former occa¬ 
sion this tribe had plundered and slain an uncle of Khaled, 
also the father of Abda’lrahman, and several Suleimites, as 
they were returning from Arabia Felix. Dreading that 
Khaled and his host might take vengeance for these misdeeds, 
they armed themselves on their approach. 

Khaled was secretly rejoiced at seeing them ride forth to 
meet him in this military array. Hailing them with an impe¬ 
rious tone, he demanded whether they were Moslems or infi¬ 
dels. They replied in faltering accents, “ Moslems.” “Why, 
then, come ye forth to meet us with weapons in your hands?” 
“ Because we have enemies among some of the tribes who may 
attack us unawares.” 

Khaled sternly ordered them to dismount and lay by their 
weapons. Some complied, and were instantly seized and 
bound; the rest fled. Taking their flight as a confession of 
guilt, he pursued them with great slaughter, laid waste the 
country, and in the effervescence of his zeal even slew some of 
the prisoners. 

Mahomet, when he heard of this unprovoked outrage, raised 
his hands to heaven, and called God to witness that he was 
innocent of it. Khaled, when upbraided with it on his return, 
would fain have shifted the blame on Abda’lrahman, but Maho¬ 
met rejected indignantly an imputation against one of the ear- 
liest and worthiest of his followers. The generous Ali was 
sent forthwith to restore to the people of Jadsima what 
Khaled had wrested from them, and to make pecuniary com¬ 
pensation to the relatives of the slain. It was a mission con¬ 
genial with his nature, and he executed it faithfully. Inquir¬ 
ing into the losses and sufferings of each individual, he paid 
him to his full content. When every loss was made good, and 
all blood atoned for, he distributed the remaining money 
among the people, gladdening every heart by his bounty. So 
Ali received the thanks and praises of the prophet, but the 
vindictive Khaled was rebuked even by those whom he had 
thought to please. 

“Behold!” said he to Abda’lrahman, “I have avenged the 
death of thy father.” “ Bather say,” replied the other indig- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 157 

nantly, “thou hast avenged the death of thine uncle. Thou 
hast disgraced the faith by an act worthy of an idolater.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOSTILITIES IN THE MOUNTAINS—ENEMY’S CAMP IN THE VALLEY 
OF AUTAS—BATTLE AT THE PASS OF HONEIN—CAPTURE OF THE 
ENEMY’S CAMP—INTERVIEW OF MAHOMET WITH THE NURSE OF 
HIS CHILDHOOD—DIVISION OF SPOIL—MAHOMET AT HIS MOTHER’S 
GRAVE. 

While the military apostles of Mahomet were spreading his 
doctrines at the point of the sword in the plains, a hostile 
storm was gathering in the mountains. A league was formed 
among the Thakefites, the Hawazins, the Joshmites, the Saad- 
ites, and several other of the hardy mountain tribes of Be¬ 
douins, to check a power which threatened to subjugate all 
Arabia. The Saadites, or Beni Sad, here mentioned, are the 
same pastoral Arabs among whom Mahomet had been nur¬ 
tured in his childhood, and in whose valley, according to tra¬ 
dition, his heart had been plucked forth and purified by an 
angel. The Thakefites, who were foremost in the league, were 
a powerful tribe, possessing the strong mountain town of 
Tayef and its productive territory. They were bigoted idola¬ 
ters, maintaining at their capital the far-famed shrine of the 
female idol A1 Lat. The reader will remember the ignomini¬ 
ous treatment of Mahomet, when he attempted to preach his 
doctrines at Tayef; being stoned in the public square, and 
ultimately driven with insult from the gates. It was probably 
a dread of vengeance at his hands which now made the Thakef¬ 
ites so active in forming a league against him. 

Malec Ibn Auf, the chief of the Thakefites, had the general 
command of the confederacy. lie appointed the valley of 
Autas, between Honein and Tayef, as the place of assemblage 
and encampment; and as he knew the fickle nature of the 
Arabs, and their proneness to return home on the least ca¬ 
price, he ordered them to bring with them their families and 
effects. They assembled, accordingly, from various parts, to 



158 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the number of four thousand fighting men; but the camp was 
crowded with women and children, and encumbered with 
flocks and herds. 

The expedient of Malec Ibn Auf to secure the adhesion of the 
warriors was strongly disapproved by Doraid, the chief of the 
Joshmites. This was an ancient warrior, upward of a hundred 
years old; meagre as a skeleton, almost blind, and so feeble 
that he had to be borne in a litter on the bade of a camel. 
Still, though unable to mingle in battle, he was potent in coun¬ 
cil from his military experience. This veteran of the desert 
advised that the women and children should be sent home 
forthwith, and the army relieved from all unnecessary incum¬ 
brances. His advice was not taken, and the valley of Autas 
continued to present rather the pastoral encampment of a tribe 
than the hasty levy of an army. 

In the mean time Mahomet, hearing of the gathering storm, 
bad sallied forth to anticipate it, at the head of about twelve 
thousand troops, partly fugitives from Mecca and auxiliaries 
from Medina, partly Arabs of the desert, some of whom had 
not yet embraced the faith. 

In taking the field he wore a polished cuirass and helmet, 
and rode his favorite white mule Daldal, seldom mounting a 
charger, as he rarely mingled in actual fight. His recent suc¬ 
cesses and his superiority in numbers making him confident of 
an easy victory, he entered the mountains without precaution, 
and pushing forward for the enemy’s camp at Mutas, came to 
a deep gloomy valley on the confines of Honein. The troops 
marched without order through the rugged defile, each one 
choosing his own path. Suddenly they were assailed by 
showers of darts, stones, and arrows, which laid two or three 
of Mahomet’s soldiers dead at his feet, and wounded several 
others. Malec, in fact, had taken post with his ablest warriors 
about the heights commanding this narrow gorge. Every 
cliff and cavern was garrisoned with archers and slingers, and 
some rushed down to contend at close quarters. 

Struck with a sudden panic, the Moslems turned and fled. In 
vain did Mahomet call upon them as their general, or appeal 
to them as the prophet of God. Each man sought but his own 
safety, and an escape from this horrible valley. 

For a moment all seemed last, and some recent but unwill¬ 
ing converts betrayed an exultation*in the supposed reverse of 
fortune of the prophet. 

“By heavens!” cried Abu Sofian. as he looked after the fly 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


159 

hig Moslems, “nothing will stop them until they reach the 
sea.” 

“ Ay,” exclaimed another, “the magic power of Mahomet is 
at an end!” 

A third, who cherished a lurking revenge for the death of 
his father, slain by the Moslems in the battle of Oliod, would 
have killed the prophet in the confusion, had he not been sur¬ 
rounded and protected by a few devoted followers. Mahomet 
himself, in an impulse of desperation, spurred his mule upon 
the enemy; but A1 Abbas seized the bridle, stayed him from 
rushing to certain death, and at the same time put up a shout 
that echoed through the narrow valley. A1 Abbas was re¬ 
nowned for strength of lungs, and at this critical moment it 
was the salvation of the army. The Moslems rallied when 
they heard his well-known voice, and finding they were not 
pursued returned to the combat. The enemy had descended 
from the heights, and now a bloody conflict ensued in the de¬ 
file. “The furnace is kindling,” cried Mahomet exultingly, 
as he saw the glitter of arms and flash of weapons. Stooping 
from his saddle and grasping a handful of dust, he scattered it 
in the air towards the enemy. ‘ ‘ Confusion on their faces!” cried 
he, “may this dust blind them!” They were blinded accord¬ 
ingly, and fled in confusion, say the Moslem writers; though 
their defeat may rather be attributed to the Moslem superior¬ 
ity of force and the zeal inspired by the acclamations of the 
prophet. Malec and the Thakefites took refuge in the distant 
city of Tayef, the rest retreated to the camp in the valley of 
Autas. 

While Mahomet remained in the valley of Honein, he sent 
Abu Amir, with a strong force, to attack the camp. The 
Hawazins made a brave defence. Abu Amir was slain; but 
his nephew, Abu Musa, toqk the command, and obtained a 
complete victory, killing many of the enemy. The camp af¬ 
forded great booty and many captives, from the unwise expe¬ 
dient of Malec Ibn Auf, in incumbering it with the families 
and effects, the flocks and herds of the confederates; and from 
his disregard of the sage advice of the veteran Doraid. The 
fate of that ancient warrior of the desert is worthy of mention. 
While the Moslem troops, scattered through the camp, were 
intent on bootj', Rabia Ibn Rafi, a young Suleimite, observed a 
litter borne off on the back of a camel, and pursued it, suppos¬ 
ing it to contain some beautiful female. On overtaking it, and 
drawing the curtain, he beheld the skeleton form of the an 


160 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


cient Doraid. Vexed and disappointed, lie struck at him 
with his sword, hut the weapon broke in his hand. “Thy 
mother,” said the old man sneeringly, “has furnished thee 
with wretched weapons; thou wilt find a better one hanging 
behind my saddle.” 

The youth seized it, but as he drew it from the scabbard, 
Doraid perceiving that he was a Suleimite, exclaimed, “Tell 
thy mother thou hast slain Doraid Ibn Simma, who has pro¬ 
tected many women of her tribe in the day of battle.” The 
words were ineffectual; the skull of the veteran was clqven 
with his own scimetar. When Rabia, on his return to Mecca, 
told his mother of the deed, “ Thou hast indeed slain a bene¬ 
factor of thy race,” said she reproachfully. “ Three women of 
thy family has Doraid Ibn Simma freed from captivity. ” 

Abu Musa returned in triumph to Mahomet; making a great 
display of the spoils of the camp of Autas, and the women and 
children whom he had captured. One of the female captives 
threw herself at the feet of the prophet, and implored his 
ipercy as his foster-sister A1 Shima, the daughter of his nurse 
Halema, who had nurtured him in the Baadite valley. Ma¬ 
homet sought in vain to recognize in her withered features the 
bright playmate of his infancy, but she laid bare her back, and 
showed a scar where he had bitten her in their childish gam¬ 
bols. He no longer doubted; but treated her with kindness, 
giving her the choice either to remain with him and under his 
protection, or to return to her home and kindred. 

A scruple rose among the Moslems with respect to their 
female captives. Could they take to themselves such as were 
married, without committing the sin of adultery? The revela¬ 
tion of a text of the Koran put an end to the difficulty. “ Ye 
shall not take to wife free women who are married unless your 
right hand shall have made them slaves.” According to this 
ail women taken in war may be made the wives of the captors, 
though their former husbands be living. The victors of Honein 
failed not to take immediate advantage of this law. 

Leaving the captives and the booty in a secure place, and 
properly guarded, Mahomet now proceeded in pursuit of the 
Thakefites who had taken refuge in Tayef. A sentiment of 
vengeance mingled with his pious ardor as he approached this 
idolatrous place, the scene of former injury and insult, and 
beheld the gate whence he had once been ignominiously driven 
forth. The walls were too strong, however to be stormed, and 
there was a protecting castle; for the first time, therefore, he 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


161 


had recourse to catapults, battering-rams, and other engines 
used in sieges, but unknown in Arabian warfare. .These were 
prepared under the direction of Salman al Farsi, the converted 
Persian. 

The besieged, however, repulsed every attack, galling the 
assailants with darts and arrows, and pouring down melted 
iron upon the shields of bull-hides, under covert of which they 
approached the walls. Mahomet now laid waste the fields, the 
orchards, and vineyards, and proclaimed freedom to all slaves 
who should desert from the city. For twenty days he carried 
on an ineffectual siege—daily offering up prayers midway be¬ 
tween the tents of his wives Omm Salama and Zeinab, to whom 
it had fallen by lot to accompany him in this campaign. His 
hopes of success began to fail, and he was further discourage 1 
by a dream, which was unfavorably interpreted by Abu Beker, 
renowned for his skill in expounding visions. He would have 
raised the siege, but his troops murmured; whereupon he 
ordered an assault upon one of the gates. As usual, it was 
obstinately defended; numbers were slain on both sides; Abu 
Sofian, who fought valiantly on the occasion, lost an eye, and 
the Moslems were finally repulsed. 

Mahomet now broke up his camp, promising his troops to 
renew the siege at a future day, and proceeded to the place 
where were collected the spoils of his expedition. These, say 
Arabian writers, amounted to twenty-four thousand camels, 
forty thousand sheep, four thousand ounces of silver, and six 
thousand captives. 

In a little while appeared a deputation from the Hawazins, 
declaring the submission of their tribe, and begging the 
restoration of their families and effects. With them came 
Halema, Mahomet’s foster-nurse, now well stricken in years. 
The recollections of his childhood again pleaded with his heart. 
“Which is dearest to you,”said lie to the Hawazins, “your 
families or your goods?” They replied, “ Our families.” 

“Enough,” rejoined he, “as far as it concerns Al Abbas and 
myself, we are ready to give up our share of the prisoners; 
but there are others to be moved. Come to me after noontide 
prayer, and say, ‘We implore the ambassador of God that he 
counsel his followers to return us our wives and children; and 
we implore his followers that they intercede with him in our 
favor.’” 

The envoys did as he advised. Mahomet and Al Abbas im¬ 
mediately renounced their share of the captives; their example 


162 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


was followed by all excepting the tribes of Tamim and Fazara, 
but Mahomet brought them to consent by promising them a six¬ 
fold share of the prisoners taken in the next expedition. Thus 
the intercession of Halema procured the deliverance of all the 
captives ot her tribe. A traditional anecdote shows the defer¬ 
ence with which Mahomet treated this humble protector of his 
infancy. “ I was sitting with the prophet,” said one of his 
disciples, “when all of a sudden a woman presented herself, 
and he rose and spread his cloth for her to sit down upon. 
When she went away, it was observed, ‘ That woman suqkled 
the prophet.’” 

Mahomet now sent an envoy to Malec, who remained shut up 
in Tayef, offering the restitution of all the spoils taken from 
him at Honein, and a present of one hundred camels, if he 
would submit and embrace the faith. Malec was conquered 
and converted by this liberal offer, and brought several of his 
confederate tribes with him to the standard of the prophet. 
He was immediately made their . chief; and proved, subse¬ 
quently, a severe scourge in the cause of the faith to his late 
associates the Thakefites. 

The Moslems now began to fear that Mahomet, in these mag¬ 
nanimous impulses, might squander away all the gains of their 
recent battles; thronging round him, therefore, they clamored 
for a division of the spoils and captives. Kegarding them 
indignantly, “Have you ever,”said he, “ found me avaricious, 
or false, or disloyal?” Then plucking a hair from the back of 
a camel, and raising his voice, “By Allah!” cried he, “I have 
never taken from the common spoil the value of that camel’s 
hair more than my fifth, and that fifth has always been ex¬ 
pended for your good. ” 

He then shared the booty as usual; four fifths among the 
troops; but his own fifth he distributed amor>g those whose 
fidelity he wished to insure. The Koreishites he considered 
dubious allies; perhaps he had overheard the exultation of 
some of them in anticipation of his defeat; he now sought to 
rivet them to him by gifts. To Abu Sofian he gave one hun¬ 
dred camels and forty okks of silver, in compensation for the 
eye lost in the attack on the gate of Tayef. To Akrema Ibn 
Abu Jahl, and others of like note, he gave in due proportions, 
and all from his own share. 

Among the lukewarm converts thus propitiated, was Abbas 
Ibn Mardas, a poet. He was dissatisfied with his share, and 
vented his discontent in satirical verses. Mahomet overheard 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


16 & 


him. “Take that man hence,” said he, “and cut out hia 
tongue.” Omar, ever ready for rigorous measures, would 
have executed the sentence literally, and on the spot; but 
others, better instructed in the prophet’s meaning, led Abbas, 
all trembling, to the public square where the captured cattle 
were collected, and bade him choose what he liked from among 
them. 

“What!” cried the poet joyously, relieved from the horrors 
of mutilation, “is this the way the prophet-would silence my 
tongue? By Allah! I will take nothing.” Mahomet, however, 
persisted in his politic generosity, and sent him sixty camels. 
From that time forward the poet was never weary of chant¬ 
ing the liberality of the prophet. 

While thus stimulating the good-will of lukewarm proselytes 
of Mecca, Mahomet excited the murmurs of his auxiliaries of 
Medina. “See,” said they, “how he lavishes gifts upon the 
treacherous Koreishites, while we, who have been loyal to him 
through all dangers, receive nothing but our naked share. 
What have we done that we should be thus thrown into the 
background?” 

Mahomet was told of their murmurs, and summoned their 
leaders to his tent. “Hearken, ye men of Medina,” said he; 
“were ye not in discord among yourselves, and have I not 
brought you into harmony? Were ye not in error, and have 
I not brought you into the path of truth? Were ye not poor, 
and have I not made you rich?” 

Thqy acknowledged the truth of his words. “Look ye!” 
continued he, “I came among you stigmatized as a liar, yet 
you believed in me; persecuted, yet you protected me; a fugi¬ 
tive, yet you sheltered me; helpless, yet you aided me. Think 
you I do not feel all this? Think you I can be ungrateful? 
You complain that I bestow gifts upon these people, and give 
none to you. It is true, I give them worldly gear, but it is to 
win their worldly hearts. To you, who have been true, I give 
—myself! They return home with sheep and camels; ye re¬ 
turn with the prophet of God among you. For by him in 
whose hands is the soul of Mahomet, though the whole world 
should go one way and ye another, I would remain with you! 
Which of you, then, have I most rewarded?” 

The auxiliaries were moved even to tears by this appeal. 
“ Oh, prophet of God,” exclaimed they, “ we are content with 
our lot!” 

The booty being divided, Mahomet returned to Mecca, not 


164 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


with the parade and exultation of a conqueror, hut in pilgrim 
garb, to complete the rites of his pilgrimage. All these being 
scrupulously performed, he appointed Moad Ibn Jabal as iman, 
or pontiff, to instruct the people in the doctrines of Islam, and 
gave the government of the city into the hands of Otab, a 
youth but eighteen years of age; after which he bade farewell 
to his native place, and set out with his troops on the return 
to Medina. 

Arriving at the village of A1 Abwa, where his mother was 
buried, his heart yearned to pay a filial tribute to her mem¬ 
ory, but his own revealed law forbade any respect to the grave 
of one who had died in unbelief. In the strong agitation of his 
feelings he implored from heaven a relaxation of this law. If 
there was any deception on an occasion of this kind, one would 
imagine it must have been self-deception, and that he really 
believed in a fancied intimation from heaven relaxing the law, 
in part, in the present instance, and permitting him to visit 
the grave. He burst into tears on arriving at this trying place 
of the tenderest affections; but tears were all the filial tribute 
he was permitted to offer. “I asked leave of God,” said he 
mournfully, “to visit my mother’s grave, and it was granted• 
but when I asked leave to pray for her, it was denied me)’ 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

DEATH OF THE PROPHET’S DAUGHTER ZEINAB—BIRTH OF HIS 
SON IBRAHIM—DEPUTATIONS FROM DISTANT TRIBES—POETICAL 
CONTEST IN PRESENCE OF THE PROPHET—HIS SUSCEPTIBILITY 
TO THE CHARMS OF POETRY—REDUCTION OF THE CITY OF 
TAYEF; DESTRUCTION OF ITS IDOLS—NEGOTIATTON WITH AMIR 
IBN TAFIEL, A PROUD BEDOUIN CHIEF; INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF 
THE LATTER—INTERVIEW OF ADI, ANOTHER CHIEF, WITH MA¬ 
HOMET. 

Shortly after his return to Medina, Mahomet was afflicted 
by the death of his daughter Zeinab, the same who had been 
given up to him in exchange for her husband Abul Aass, the 
unbeliever, captured at the battle of Beder. The domestic 
affections of the prophet were strong, and he felt deeply this 
bereavement; he was consoled, however, by the birth of a son, 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


165 


by Ms favorite concubine Mariyah. He called the child Ibra¬ 
him, and rejoiced in the hope that this son of his old age, his 
only male issue living, would continue his name to after gen¬ 
erations. 

His fame, either as a prophet or a conqueror, was now 
spreading to the uttermost parts of Arabia, and deputations 
from distant tribes were continually arriving at Medina, some 
acknowledging him as a prophet and embracing Islamism: 
others submitting to Mm as a temporal sovereign, and agree¬ 
ing to pay tribute The talents of Mahomet rose to the exi¬ 
gency of the moment; his views expanded with his fortunes, 
and he now proceeded with statesmanlike skill to regulate the 
fiscal coneerns of his rapidly growing empire. Under the 
specious appellation of alms, a contribution was levied on true 
believers, amounting to a tithe of the productions of the earth, 
where it was fertilized by brooks and rain; and a twentieth 
part where its fertility was the result of irrigation. For every 
ten camels two sheep were required; for forty head of cattle, 
one cow; for thirty head, a two years’ calf; for every forty 
^heep, one; whoever contributed more than at this rate would 
be considered so much the more devout, and would gain a pro¬ 
portionate favor in the eyes of God. 

The tribute exacted from those who submitted to temporal 
evvay, but continued in unbelief, was at the rate of one dinar 
in money or goods, for each adult person, bond or free. 

Some difficulty occurred in collecting the charitable contri¬ 
butions ; the proud tribe of Tamim openly resisted them, and 
drove away the collector. A troop of Arab horse was sent 
against them, and brought away a number of men, women, 
and children, captives. A deputation of the Tamimites came 
to reclaim the prisoners. Four of the deputies were renowned 
as orators and poets, and instead of humbling themselves 
before Mahomet, proceeded to declaim in prose and verse, 
defying the Moslems to a poetical contest. 

44 1 am not sent by God as a poet,” replied Mahomet, 44 neither 
do I seek fame as an orator.” 

Some of his followers, however, accepted the challenge, and 
a war of ink ensued, in which the Tamimites acknowledged 
themselves vanquished. So well pleased was Mahomet with 
the spirit of their defiance, with theii* poetry, and with their 
frank acknowledgment of defeat, that he not merely gave 
them up the prisoners, but dismissed them with presents. 

Another instance of his susceptibility to the charms of 


166 


MAHOMET AND "HI8 SUCCESSORS. 


poetry is recorded in the case or Caab Ibn Zohair, a celebrated 
poet of Mecca, who had made him the subject of satirical 
verses, and had consequently been one of the proscribed, but 
had fled on the capture of the sacred city. Caab now came to 
Medina to make his peace, and approaching Mahomet when in 
the mosque, began chanting his praises in a poem afterward 
renowned among the Arabs as a masterpiece. He concluded 
by especially extolling his clemency, ‘ ‘ for with the prophet of 
God the pardon of injuries is, of all his virtues, that on which 
one can rely with the greatest certainty. ” * 

Captivated with the verse, and soothed b> , the flattery, 
Mahomet made good the poet’s words, for he not merely for¬ 
gave him, but taking off his own mantle, threw it upon his 
shoulders. The poet preserved the sacred garment to the day 
of his death, refusing golden offers for it. The Caliph Moa- 
wyah purchased it of his heirs for ten thousand drachmas, and 
it continued to be worn by the Caliphs in processions and 
solemn ceremonials, until the thirty-sixth Calipha*, when it 
was torn from the back of the Caliph Al-Most’asem Billah, by 
Holaga, the Tartar conqueror, and burnt to ashes. 

While town after town and castle after castle of the Arab 
tribes were embracing the faith, and professing allegiance to 
Mahomet, Tayef, the stronghold of the Thakefites, remained 
obstinate m the worship of its boasted idol A1 Lat. The in- 
habitants confided in their mountain position, and in the 
strength cl their walls and castle. But, though safe from 
assault, they found themselves gradually hemmed in and 
isolated by the Moslems, so that at length they could not stir 
beyond their walls without being attacked. Thus threatened 
and harassed, they sent ambassadors to Mahomet to treat for 
peace. 

The prophet cherished a deep resentment against this stiff¬ 
necked and most idolatrous city, which had at one time ejected 
him from its gates, and at another time repulsed him from its 
walls. His terms were conversion and unqualified submission. 
The ambassadors readily consented to embrace Islamism them¬ 
selves, but pleaded the danger of suddenly shocking the people 
of Tayef, by a demand to renounce their ancient faith. In 
their name, therefore, they entreated permission for three 
years longer to worship their ancient idol A1 Lat. The re¬ 
quest was peremptorily denied. They then asked at least one 
month’s delay, to prepare the public mind. This likewise was 
refused, all idolatry being incompatible with the woi*ship of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 167 

God. They then entreated to be excused from tha observance 
of the daily prayers. 

“There can be no true religion without prayer,” replied 
Mahomet. In fine, they were compelled to make an uncon¬ 
ditional submission. 

Abu Sofian, Ibn Harb, and A1 Mogheira were sent to Tayef, 
to destroy the idol A1 Lat, which was of stone. Abu Sofian 
struck at it with a pickaxe, but missing his blow fell prostrate 
on his face. The populace set up a shout, considering it a 
good augury, but A1 Mogheira demolished their hopes, and 
the statue, at one blow of a sledge-hammer. He then stripped 
it of the costly robes, the bracelets, the necklace, the earrings, 
and other ornaments of gold and precious stones wherewith it 
had been decked by its worshippers, and left it in fragments 
on the ground, with the women of Tayef weeping and lament¬ 
ing over it.* 

Among those who still defied the power of Mahomet was the 
Bedouin chief Amir Ibn Tufiel, head of the powerful tribe of 
Amir. He was renowned for personal beauty and princely 
magnificence; but was of a haughty spirit, and his magnifi¬ 
cence partook of ostentation. At the great fair of Okaz, 
between Tayef and Naklah, where merchants, pilgrims, and 
poets were accustomed to assemble from all parts of Arabia, a 
herald would proclaim: *‘ Whoso wants a beast of burden, let 
him come to Amir; is any one hungry, let him come to Amir, 
and 1iq will be fed; is he persecuted, let him fly to Amir, and 
he will be protected.” 

Amir had dazzled every one by his generosity, and his 
ambition had kept pace with his popularity. The rising 
power of Mahomet inspired him with jealousy. When ad¬ 
vised to make terms with him* v “I have sworn,” replied he 
haughtily, “never to rest until I had won all Arabia; and 
shall I do homage to this Koreishite ?” 

The recent conquests of the Moslems, however, brought him 
to listen to the counsels of his friends. He repaired to Medina, 
and coming into the presence of Mahomet, demanded frankly, 
“ Wilt thou be my friend ?” 


* The Thakefites continue a powerful tribe to this day, possessing the same fer¬ 
tile region on the eastern declivity of the Hedjas chain of mountains. Some in. 
habit the ancient town of Tayef, others dwell in tents and have flocks of goats and 
sheep. They can raise two thousand matchlocks, and defended their stronghold of 
Tayef in the wars with the Wahabys.— Burckhardt's Notes, v. 2, 




168 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


“Never,‘by Allah!” was the reply, “unless thou dost em¬ 
brace the faith of Islam.” 

“ And if I do, wilt thou content thyself with the cway over 
the Arabs of the cities, and leave to me the Bedouins of the 
deserts?” 

Mahomet replied in the negative. 

“ What, then, will I gain by embracing thy faith?” 

“The fellowship of all true believers.” 

“I covet no such fellowship!” replied the proud Amir; and 
with a warlike menace he returned to his tribe. 

A Bedouin chieftain of a different character was Adi, a prince 
of the tribe of Tai, His father Hatim had been famous, not mere¬ 
ly for warlike deeds, but for boundless generosity, insomuch 
that the Arabs were accustomed to say, “as generous as 
Hatim.” Adi the son was a Christian; and however he might 
have inherited his father’s generosity, was deficient in his 
valor. Alarmed at the ravaging expeditions of the Moslems, 
he ordered a young Arab, who tended his camels in the desert, 
to have several of the strongest and fleetest at hand, and to 
give instant notice of the approach of an enemy. 

It happened that Ali, who was scouring that part of the 
country with a band of horsemen, came in sight, bearing with 
him two banners, one white, the other black. The young Be¬ 
douin beheld them from afar, and ran to Adi, exclaiming, 
“ The Moslems are at hand. I see their banners at a distance!” 
Adi instantly placed his wife and children on the camels, and 
fled to Syria. His sister, surnamed Saffana, or the Pearl, fell 
into the hands of the Moslems, and was carried with other cap¬ 
tives to Medina. Seeing Mahomet pass near to the place of her 
confinement, she cried to him: 

“ Have pity upon me, oh ambassador of God! My father is 
dead, and he who should have protected has abandoned me. 
Have pity upon me, oh ambassador of God, as God may have 
pity upon thee!” 

“Who is thy protector?” asked Mahomet. 

“Adi, the son of Hatim.” 

“He is a fugitive from God and his prophet,”replied Maho¬ 
met, and passed on. 

On the folloYvdng day, as Mahomet was passing by, Ali, who 
had been touched by the woman’s beauty and her grief, whis¬ 
pered to her to arise and entreat the prophet once more. She 
accordingly repeated her prayer. “Oh prophet of God! my 
father is dead; my brother, who should have been my pro* 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 169 

tector, has abandoned me. Have mercy upon me, as God will 
have mercy upon thee.” 

Mahomet turned to him benignantly. “Be it so,” said he; 
and lie not only set her free, but gave her raiment and a camel, 
and sent her by the first caravan bound to Syria. 

Arriving in presence of her brother, she upbraided him with 
his desertion. He acknowledged his fault, and was forgiven. 
She then urged him to make his peace with Mahomet; “he is 
truly a prophet,” said she, “and will soon have universal 
sway; hasten, therefore, in time to win his favor. ” 

The politic Adi listened to her counsel, and hastening to Me- 
dina, greeted the prophet, who was in the mosque. His own 
account of the interview presents a striking picture of the sim¬ 
ple manners and mode of life of Mahomet, now in the full ex¬ 
ercise of sovereign power, and the career of rapid conquest. 
“He asked me,” says Adi, “my name, and when I gave it, in¬ 
vited me to accompany him to his home. On* the way a weak 
emaciated woman accosted him. He stopped and talked to her 
of her affairs. This, thought 1 to myself, is not very kingly. 
When we arrived at his house he gave me a leathern cushion 
stuffed with palm-leaves to sit upon, while he sat upon the bare 
ground. This, thought I, is not very princely! 

“He then asked me three times to embrace Islamism. I re¬ 
plied, I have a faith of my own. ‘ I know thy faith, ’ said he, 
‘ better than thou dost thyself. As prince, thou takest one- 
fourth of the booty from thy people. Is this Christian doc¬ 
trine?’ By these words I perceived him to be a prophet, who 
knew more than other men. 

“ ‘Thou dost not incline to Islamism,’ continued he, ‘because 
thou seest we are poor. The time is at hand when true be¬ 
lievers will have more wealth than they will know how to 
manage. Perhaps thou art deterred by seeing the small num¬ 
ber of the Moslems in comparison with the hosts of their ene¬ 
mies. By Allah! in a little while a Moslem woman will be able 
to make a pilgrimage on her camel, alone and fearless, from 
Kadesia to God’s temple at Mecca. Thou thinkest, probably, 
that the might is in the hands of the unbelievers; know that 
the time is not far off when we will plant our standards on the 
white castles of Babylon. 

The politic Adi believed in the prophecy, and forthwith em¬ 
braced the faith. 


* Weil's Mohammed, p. 247. 





170 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

PREPARATIONS FOR AN EXPEDITION AGAINST SYRIA—INTRIGUES 
OF ABDALLAH IBN OBBA—CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE FAITHFUL- 
MARCH OF THE ARMY—THE ACCURSED REGION OF HAJAR— 
ENCAMPMENT AT TABUC—SUBJUGATION OF THE NEIGHBORING 
PROVINCES—KHALED SURPRISES OKAIDER AND HIS CASTLE- 
RETURN OF THE ARMY TO MEDINA. 

Mahomet had now, either by conversion or conquest, made 
himself sovereign of almost all Arabia. The scattered tribes 
heretofore dangerous to each other, but by their disunion pow¬ 
erless against the rest of the world, he had united into one na¬ 
tion, and thus §tted for external conquest. His prophetic 
character gave him absolute control of the formidable power 
thus conjured up in the desert, and he was now prepared to 
lead it forth for the propagation of the faith and the extension 
©f the Moslem power in foreign lands. 

His numerous victories, and the recent affair at Muta, had at 
length, it is said, roused the attention of the Emperor Herac- 
lius, who was assembling an army on the confines of Arabia 
to crush this new enemy. Mahomet determined to anticipate 
his hostilities, and to carry the standard of the faith into the 
very heart of Syria. 

Hitherto he had undertaken his expeditions with secrecy, 
imparting his plans and intentions to none but his most con¬ 
fidential officers, and beguiling his followers into enterprises 
of danger. The present campaign, however, so different from 
the brief predatory excursions of the Arabs, would require 
great preparations; an unusual force was to be assembled, and 
all kinds of provisions made for distant marches, and a long 
absence. He proclaimed openly, therefore, the object and 
nature of the enterprise. 

There was not the usual readiness to flock to his standard. 
Many remembered the disastrous affair at Muta, and dreaded 
to come again in conflict with disciplined Roman troops. The 
time of year also was unpropitious for such a distant and pro¬ 
longed expedition. It was the season of summer heat; the 
earth was parched, and the springs and brooks were dried up. 
The date-harvest too was approaching, when the men should 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 171 

be at home to gather the fruit, rather than abroad on predatory 
enterprises. 

All these things were artfully urged upon the people by Ab¬ 
dallah Ibn Obba, the Khazradite, who continued to be the cov¬ 
ert enemy of Mahomet, and seized every occasion to counteract 
his plans. “A fine season this,” would he cry, “ to undertake 
such a distant march in defiance of dearth and drought, and the 
fervid heat of the desert! Mahomet seems to think a war with 
Greeks quite a matter of sport; trust me, you will find it very 
different from a war of Arab against Arab. By Allah! me- 
thinks I already see you all in chains.” 

By these and similar scoffs and suggestions, he wrought upon 
the fears and feelings of the Khazradites, his partisans, and 
rendered the enterprise generally unpopular. Mahomet, as 
usual, had resort to revelation. “Those who would remain 
behind, and refuse to devote themselves to the service of God,” 
said a timely chapter of the Koran, ‘ ‘ allege the summer heat 
as an excuse. Tell them the fire of hell is hotter! They may 
hug themselves in the enjoyment of present safety, but end¬ 
less tears will be their punishment hereafter.” 

Some of his devoted adherents manifested their zeal at this 
lukewarm moment. Omar, A1 Abbas, and Abda’lrahman gave 
large sums of money; several female devotees brought their 
ornaments and jewels. Othman delivered one thousand, some 
say ten thousand, dinars to Mahomet, and was absolved from 
his sins, past, present, or to come. Abu Beker gave four thou¬ 
sand drachmas; Mahomet hesitated to accept the offer, know¬ 
ing it to be all that he possessed. “What will remain,” said 
he, “for thee and thy family ?” “God and his prophet,” was 

the reply. 

These devout examples had a powerful effect; yet it was with 
much difficulty that an army of ten thousand horse and twenty 
thousand foot was assembled. Mahomet now appointed Ali 
governor of Medina during his absence, and guardian of both 
their families. He accepted the trust with great reluctance, 
having been accustomed always to accompany the prophet, and 
share all his perils. All arrangements being completed, Ma¬ 
homet marched forth from Medina on this momentous expedi¬ 
tion. A part of his army was composed of Khazradites and 
their confederates, led by Abdallah Ibn Obba. This man, whom 
Mahomet had well denominated the Chief of the Hypocrites, 
encamped separately with his adherents at night, at some 
distance in the rear of the main army; and when the latter 


172 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


marched forward in the morning, lagged behind, and led his 
troops hack to Medina. Repairing to Ali, whose dominion in 
the city was irksome to him and his adherents, he endeavored 
to make him discontented with his position, alleging that Ma¬ 
homet had left him in charge of Medina solely to rid himself 
of an incumbrance. Stung by the suggestion, Ali hastened 
after Mahomet, and demanded if what Abdallah and his fol¬ 
lowers said were true. 

“These men,” replied Mahomet, “are liars. They are the 
party of Hypocrites and Doubters, who would breed sedition 
in Medina. I left thee behind to keep watch over them, and to 
be a guardian to both our families. I would have thee to be to 
me what Aaron was to Moses; excepting that thou canst not 
be, like him, a prophet; I being the last of the prophets.” With 
this explanation, Ali returned contented to Medina. 

Many have inferred from the foregoing that Mahomet in¬ 
tended Ali for his Caliph or successor; that being the significa¬ 
tion of the Arabic word used to denote the relation of Aaron 
to Moses. 

The troops who had continued on with Mahomet soon began 
to experience the difficulties of braving the desert in this sultry 
season. Many turned back on the second day, and others on 
the third and fourth. Whenever word was brought to the 
prophet of their desertion, “Let them go,” would be the reply; 
“if they are good for anything God will bring them back to 
us; if they are not, we are relieved from so many incum¬ 
brances.” 

While some thus lost heart upon the march, others who had 
remained at Medina repented of their faint-heartedness. One, 
named Abu Khaithama, entering his garden during the sultry 
heat of the day, beheld a repast of viands and fresh water 
spread for him by his two wives in the cool shade of a tent. 
Pausing at the threshold, ‘ 4 At this moment, ” exclaimed he, 
“the prophet of God is exposed to the winds and heats of the 
desert, and shall Khaithama sit here in the shade beside his 
beautiful wives ? By Allah! I will not enter the tent!” He 
immediately armed himself with sword and lance, and mount¬ 
ing his camel, hastened off to join the standard of the faith. 

In the mean time the army, after a weary march of seven 
days, entered the mountainous district of Hajar, inhabited in 
days of old by the Thamudites, one of the lost tribes of Arabia. 
It was the accursed region, the tradition concerning which has 
already been related. The advance of the army, knowing 


MAUOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


173 


nothing of this tradition, and being heated and fatigued, be¬ 
held with delight a brook running through a verdant valley, 
and cool caves cut in the sides of the neighboring hills, once 
the abodes of the heaven-smitten Thamudites. Halting along 
the brook, some prepared to bathe, others began to cook and 
make bread, while all promised themselves cool quarters for 
the night in the caves. 

Mahomet, in marching, had kept, as was his wont, in the 
rear of the army to assist the weak; occasionally taking up a 
wayworn laggard behind him. Arriving at the place where 
the troops had halted, he recollected it of old, and the tradi¬ 
tions concerning it, which had been told to him when he passed 
here in the days of his boyhood. Fearful of incurring the ban 
which hung over the neighborhood, he ordered his troops to 
throw away the meat cooked with the water of the brook, to 
give the bread kneaded with it to the camels, and to hurry 
away from the heaven-accursed place. Then wrapping his face 
in the folds of his mantle, and setting spurs to his mule, he 
hastened through that sinful region; the army following him 
as if flying from ah enemy. 

The succeeding night was one of great suffering; the army 
had to encamp without water; the weather was intensely hot, 
with a parching wind from the desert; an intolerable thirst 
prevailed throughout the camp, as though the Thamudite ban 
still hung over it. The next day, however, an abundant rain 
refreshed and invigorated both man and beast. The march 
was resumed with new ardor, and the army arrived, without 
further hardship, at Tabuc, a small town on the confines of the 
Roman empire, about half way between Medina and Damascus, 
and about ten days’ journey from either city. 

Here Mahomet pitched his camp in the neighborhood of a 
fountain, and in the midst of groves and pasturage. Arabian 
traditions affirm that the fountain was nearly dry, insomuch 
that, when a small vase was filled for the prophet, not a drop 
was left; having assuaged his thirst, however, and made his 
ablutions, Mahomet threw what remained in the vase back into 
the fountain; whereupon a stream gushed forth sufficient for 
the troops and all the cattle. 

From this encampment Mahomet sent out his captains to 
proclaim and enforce the faith, or to exact tribute. Some of 
the neighboring princes sent embassies, either acknowledging 
the divinity of his mission or submitting to his temporal sway. 
One of these was Johanna Ibn Ruba, prince of Eyla, a Chris- 


174 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


tian city near the Red Sea. This was the same city about 
which the tradition is told, that in days of old, when its in¬ 
habitants were Jews, the old men were turned into swine, and 
the young men into monkeys, for fishing on the Sabbath, a 
judgment solemnly recorded in the Koran. 

The prince of Eyla made a covenant of peace with Mahomet, 
agreeing to pay an annual tribute of three thousand dinars or 
crowns of gold. The form of the covenant became a precedent 
in treating with other powers. 

Among the Arab princes who professed the Christian faith, 
and refused to pay homage to Mahomet, was Okaider Ibn 
Malec, of the tribe of Kenda. He resided in a castle at the 
foot of a mountain, in the midst of his domain. Khaled was 
sent with a troop of horse to bring him to terms. Seeing the 
castle was too strong to be carried by assault, he had recourse 
to stratagem. One moonlight night, as Okaider and his wife 
were enjoying the fresh air on the terraced roof of the castle, 
they beheld an animal grazing, which they supposed to be a 
wild ass from the neighboring mountains. Okaider, who was 
a keen huntsman, ordered horse and lanc<3, and sallied forth 
to the chase, accompanied by his brother Hassan and several 
of his people. The wild ass proved to be a decoy. They had 
not ridden far before Khaled and his men rushed from am¬ 
bush and attacked them. They were too lightly armed to 
make much resistance. Hassan was’ killed on the spot, and 
Okaider taken prisoner; the rest fled back to the castle, which, 
however, was soon surrendered. The prince was ultimately 
set at liberty on paying a heavy ransom and becoming a 
tributary. 

As a trophy of the victory, Khaled sent to Mahomet the vest 
stripped from the body of Hassan. It was of silk, richly 
embroidered with gold. The Moslems gathered round, and 
examined it with admiration. “Do you admire this vest?” 
said the prophet. ‘ ‘ I swear by him in whose hands is the 
soul of Mahomet, the vest which Saad, the son of Maadi, 
wears at this moment in paradise, is far more precious.” This 
Saad was the judge who passed sentence of death on seven 
hundred Jewish captives at Medina, at the conclusion of a 
former campaign. 

His troops being now refreshed by the sojourn at Tabue, 
and the neighboring country being brought into subjection, 
Mahomet was bent upon prosecuting the object of his cam¬ 
paign, and pushing forward into the heart of Syria. His 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


175 

ardor, however, was not shared by his followers. Intelligence 
of immense bodies of hostile troops, assembled on the Syrian 
borders, had damped the spirits of the army. Mahomet 
remarked the general discouragement, yet was loath to 
abandon the campaign when but half completed. Calling a 
council of war, he propounded the question whether or not 
to continue forward. To this Omar replied dryly, “If thou 
hast the command of God to proceed further, do so.” “ If 1 
had the command of God to proceed further,” observed Ma¬ 
homet, “I should not have asked thy counsel.” 

Omar felt the rebuke. He then, in a respectful tone, repre¬ 
sented the impolicy of advancing in the face of the over¬ 
whelming, force said to be collected on the Syrian frontier; 
he represented, also, how much Mahomet had already effected 
in this campaign. He had checked the threatened invasion ox 
the imperial arms, and had received the homage and sub¬ 
mission of various tribes and people, from the head of the Red 
Sea to the Euphrates: he advised him, therefore, to be content 
for the present year with what he had achieved, and to defer 
the completion of the enterprise to a future campaign. 

His counsel was adopted; for, whenever Mahomet was not 
under strong excitement, or fancied inspiration, he was rather 
prone to yield up his opinion in military matters to that of his 
generals. After a sojourn of about twenty days, therefore, at 
Tabuc, he broke up his camp, and conduced his army back to 
Medina. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO MEDINA—PUNISHMENT OF THOSE W v O 
HAD REFUSED TO JOIN THE CAMPAIGN—EFFECTS OF EXCOM¬ 
MUNICATION—DEATH OF ABDALLAH IBN OBBA-—DISSENSIONS IN 
THE PROPHET’S HAREM. 

The entries of Mahomet into Medina on returning from his 
warlike triumphs, partook of the simplicity and absence of 
parade, which characterized all his actions. On approachmg 
the city, when his household came forth with the multitude to 
meet him, he would stop to greet them, and take up the chil¬ 
dren of the house behind him on his horse. It was in this 



176 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


simple way he entered Medina,, on returning from the cam¬ 
paign against Tabuc. 

The arrival of an army laden with spoil, gathered in the 
most distant expedition ever undertaken by the soldiers of 
Islam, was an event of too great moment, not to be hailed 
with triumphant exultation by the community. Those alone 
were cast down in spirit who had refused to march forth with 
the army, or had deserted it when on the march. All these 
were at first placed under an interdict; Mahomet forbidding 
his faithful followers to hold any intercourse with them. 
Mollified, however, by their contrition or excuses, he gradually 
forgave the greater part of them. Seven of those who con¬ 
tinued under interdict, finding themselves cut off from 
communion with their acquaintance, and marked with oppro¬ 
brium amid an exulting community, became desperate, and 
chained themselves to the walls of the mosque, swearing to 
remaih there until pardoned. Mahomet, on the other hand, 
swore he would leave them there unless otherwise commanded 
by God. Fortunately he received the command in a revealed 
verse of the Koran; but, in freeing them from their self- 
imposed fetters, he exacted one third of their possessions, to 
be expended in the service of the faith. 

Among those still under interdict were Kaab Ibn Malee, 
Murara Ibn Rabia, and Hilal Ibn Omeya. These had once 
been among the most zealous of professing Moslems; their 
defection was, therefore, ten times more heinous in the eyes 
of the prophet, than that of their neighbors, whose faith had 
been lukewarm and dubious. Toward them, therefore, he 
continued implacable. Forty days they remained interdicted, 
and the interdict extended to communication with their wives. 

The account given by Kaab Ibn Malee of his situation, 
while thus excommunicated, presents a vivid picture of the 
power of Mahomet over the minds of his adherents. Kaab 
declared that everybody shunned him, or regarded him with 
an altered mien. His two companions in disgrace did not 
leave their homes; he, however, went about from place to 
place, but no one spake to him. He sought the mosque, sat 
down near the prophet, and saluted him, but his salutation 
was not returned. On the forty-first day qame a command, 
that he should separate from his wife. He now left the city, 
and pitched a tent on the hill of Sala, determined there to 
undergo in its severest rigor the punishment meted out to him. 
His heart, however, was dying away; the wide world, he said. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


177 


appeared to grow narrow to Mm. On the fifty-first day came 
a messenger holding out the hope of pardon. He hastened to 
Medina, and sought the prophet at the mosque, who received 
him with a radiant countenance, and said that God had for¬ 
given him. The soul of Kaab was lifted up from the depths of 
despondency, and in the transports of his gratitude, he gave a 
portion of his wealth in atonement of his error. 

Not long after the return of the army to Medina, Abdallah 
Ibn Obba, the Khazradite, ‘ ‘ the chief of the Hypocrites, ” fell 
ill, so that his life was despaired of. Although Mahomet was 
well aware of the perfidy of this man, and the secret arts he 
had constantly practised against him, he visited him repeatedly 
during his illness; was with him at his dying hour, and fol¬ 
lowed his body to the grave. There, at the urgent entreaty of 
the son of the deceased, he put up prayers that his sins might 
be forgiven. 

Omar privately remonstrated with Mahomet for praying for 
a hypocrite; reminding him how often he had been slandered 
by Abdallah; but he was shrewdly answered by a text of the 
Koran: “Thou mayest pray for the ‘Hypocrites’ or not, as 
thou wilt; but though thou shouldest pray seventy times, yet 
will they not be forgiven. ” 

The prayers at Abdallah’s grave, therefore, were put up out 
of policy, to win favor with the Khazradites, and the powerful 
friends of the deceased; and in this respect the prayers were 
successful, for most of the adherents of the deceased became 
devoted to the prophet, whose SAvay was thenceforth undis¬ 
puted in Medina. Subsequently he announced another revela¬ 
tion, which forbade him to pray by the death-bed or stand by 
the grave of any one who died in unbelief. 

But though Mahomet exercised such dominion over his dis¬ 
ciples, and the community at large, he had great difficulty in 
governing his wives, and maintaining tranquillity in his 
harem. He appears to have acted with tolerable equity in his 
connubial concerns, assigning to each of his wives a separate 
habitation, of which she was sole mistress, and passing the 
twenty-four hours with them by turns. It so happened, that 
on one occasion, when he was sojourning with Hafsa, the latter 
left her dwelling to visit her father. Returning unexpectedly, 
she surprised the prophet with liis favorite and fortunate 
slave Mariyah, the mother of Ms son Ibrahim. The jealousy 
of Hafsa was vociferous. Mahomet endeavored to pacify her, 
dreading lest her outcries should rouse his whole harem to re* 


178 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


bellion* but she was only to be appeased by an oath on his 
part never more to cohabit with Mariyah. On these terms she 
forgave the past and promised secrecy. 

She broke her promise, however, and revealed to Ayesha the 
infidelity of the prophet; and in a little while it was known 
throughout the harem. His wives now united in a storm of 
reproaches; until, his patience being exhausted, he repudiated 
Hafsa, and renounced all. intercourse with the rest. For a 
month he lay alone on a mat in a separate apartment; but 
Allah, at length, in consideration of his lonely state, sent down 
the first and sixth chapters of the Koran, absolving him from 
the oath respecting Mariyah, who forthwith became the com¬ 
panion of his solitary chamber. 

The refractory wives were now brought to a sense of their 
error, and apprised by the same revelation, that the restric¬ 
tions imposed on ordinary men did not apply to the prophet. 
In the end he took back Hafsa, who was penitent; and he was 
reconciled to Ayesha, whom he tenderly loved, and all the rest 
were in due time received into favor; but he continued to 
cherish Mariyah, for she was fair to look upon, and was the 
mother of his only son. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

ABU BEKEP CONDUCTS THE YEARLY PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA- 
MISSION OF ALI TO ANNOUNCE A REVELATION. 

The sacred month of yearly pilgrimage was now at hand, 
but Mahomet was too much occupied with public and domestic 
concerns to absent himself from Medina: he deputed Abu 
Beker, therefore, to act in his place as emir or commander of 
the pilgrims, who were to resort from Medina to the holy city. 
Abu Beker accordingly departed at the head of three hundred 
pilgrims, with twenty camels for sacrifice. 

Not long afterward, Mahomet summoned his son-in-law and 
devoted disciple Ali, and, mounting him on A1 Adha, or the 
slit-eared, the swiftest of his camels, urged him to hasten with 
all speed to Mecca, there to promulgate before the multitude 
of pilgrims assembled from all parts, an important sura, or 
chapter of the Koran; just received from heaven. 

Ali executed his mission witli his accustomed zeal and fide! 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


179 


ity. He reached the sacred city in the height of the great 
religious festival. On the day of sacrifice, when the cere¬ 
monies of pilgrimage were completed by the slaying of the 
victims in the valley of Mina, and when Abu Beker had 
preached and instructed the people in the doctrines and rites 
of Islamism, Ali rose before an immense multitude assembled 
at the hill A1 Akaba, and announced himself a messenger from 
the prophet, bearing an important revelation. He then read 
the sura, or chapter of the Koran, of which he was the bearer; 
in which the religion of the sword was declared in all its rigor. 
It absolved Mahomet from all truce or league with idolatrous 
and other unbelievers, should they in any wise have been false 
to their stipulations, or given aid to his enemies. It allowed 
unbelievers four months of toleration from the time of this 
announcement, during which months they might “go to and 
fro about the earth securely,” but at the expiration of that 
time all indulgence would cease; war would then be made in 
every way, at every time, and in every place, by open force 
or by stratagem, against those who persisted in unbelief; 
no alternative would be left them but to embrace the faith 
or pay tribute. The holy months and the holy places would 
no longer afford them protection. “When the months where¬ 
in ye are not allowed to attack them shall be passed,” said 
the revelation, “kill the idolatrous wherever ye shall find 
them, or take them prisoners; besiege them, or lay in wait for 
them. ” The ties of blood and friendship were to be alike dis¬ 
regarded; the faithful were to hold no communion with their 
nearest relatives and dearest friends, should they persist in 
idolatry. After the expiration of the current year, no un¬ 
believer was to be permitted to tread the sacred bounds of 
Mecca, nor to enter the temple of Allah, a prohibition which 
continues to the present day. 

This stringent chapter of the Koran is thought to have been 
provoked, in a great measure, by the conduct of some of the 
Jewish and idolatrous Arabs, with whom Mahomet had made 
covenants, but who had repeatedly played him false, and even 
made treacherous attempts upon his life. It evinces, however, 
the increased confidence he felt in consequence of the death of 
his insidious and powerful foe, Abdallah Ibn Obba, and the 
rapid conversion or subjugation of the Arab tribes. It was, in 
fact, a decisive blow for the exclusive domination of his faith. 

When Abu Beker and Ali returned to Mecca, the former ex¬ 
pressed surprise and dissatisfaction that he had not been made 


180 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


the promulgator of so important a revelation, as it seemed to 
be connected with his recent mission, but he was pacified by 
the assurance that all new revelations must be announced by 
the prophet himself, or by some one of his immediate family. 


CHAPTEK XXXVI. 

MAHOMET SENDS HIS CAPTAINS ON DISTANT ENTERPRISES—A?' 
POINTS LIEUTENANTS TO GOVERN IN ARABIA FELIX—SENDS ALI 
TO SUPPRESS AN INSURRECTION IN THAT PROVINCE—DEATH OF 
THE PROPHET’S ONLY SON IBRAHIM —HIS CONDUCT AT THE 
DEATH-BED AND THE GRAVE—HIS GROWING INFIRMITIES—HIS 
VALEDICTORY PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA, AND HIS CONDUCT AND 
PREACHING WHILE THERE. 

The promulgation of the last-mentioned chapter of the 
Koran, with the accompanying denunciation of exterminating 
war against all who should refuse to believe or submit, pro¬ 
duced hosts of converts and tributaries; so that, toward the 
close of the month, and in the beginning of the tenth year of 
the Hegira, the gates of Medina were thronged with envoys 
from distant tribes and princes. Among those who bowed to 
the temporal power of the prophet was Farwa, lieutenant of 
Heraclius, in Syria, and governor of Amon, the ancient capital 
of the Ammonites. His act of submission, however, was dis¬ 
avowed by the emperor, and punished with imprisonment. 

Mahomet felt and acted more and more as a sovereign, but 
his grandest schemes as a conqueror were always sanctified by 
his zeal as an apostle. His captains were sent on more distant 
expeditions than formerly, but it was always with a view to 
destroy idols and bring idolatrous tribes to subjection; so that 
his temporal power but kept pace with the propagation of his 
faith. He appointed two lieutenants to govern in his name in 
Arabia Felix; but a portion of that rich and important coun¬ 
try having shown itself refractory, Ali was ordered to repair 
thither at the head of three hundred horsemen, and bring the 
inhabitants to reason. 

The youthful disciple expressed a becoming diffidence to un¬ 
dertake a mission where he would have to treat with men far 
older and wiser than himself; but Mahomet laid one hand 
upon his lips, and the other upon his breast, and raising his 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


181 


eyes to heaven, exclaimed, ‘ ‘ Oh, Allah! loosen his tongue and 
guide his heart!” He gave him one rule for his conduct as 
a judge. “When two parties come before thee, never pro¬ 
nounce in favor of one until thou hast heard the other.” Then 
giving into his hands the standard of the faith, and placing the 
turban on his head, he bade him farewell. 

When the military missionary arrived in the heretical re¬ 
gion of Yemen, his men, indulging their ancient Arab propen¬ 
sities, began to sack, to plunder, and destroy. Ali checked 
their excesses, and arresting the fugitive inhabitants, began to 
expound to them the doctrines of Islam. His tongue, though 
so recently consecrated by the prophet, failed to carry convic¬ 
tion, for he was answered by darts and arrows; whereupon he 
returned to the old argument of the sword, which he urged 
with such efficacy that, after twenty unbelievers had been 
slain, the rest avowed themselves thoroughly convinced. This 
zealous achievement was followed by others of a similar kind, 
after each of which he dispatched messengers to the prophet, 
announcing a new triumph of the faith. 

While Mahomet was exulting in the tidings of success from 
every quarter, he was. stricken to the heart by one of the 
severest of domestic bereavements. Ibrahim, his son by his 
favorite concubine Mariyah, a child but fifteen months old, 
his only male issue, on whom reposed his hope of transmitting 
his name to posterity, was seized with a mortal malady, and 
expired before his eyes. Mahomet could not control a father’s 
feelings as he bent in agony over this blighted blossom of his 
hopes. Yet even in this trying hour he showed that submis¬ 
sion to the will of God which formed the foundation of his 
faith. “My heart is sad,” murmured he, “and mine eyes 
overflow with tears at parting with thee, oh, my son! And 
still greater would be my grief, did I not know that I must 
soon follow thee; for we are of God; from him we came, and 
to him we must return. ” 

Abda’lrahman seeing him in tears, demanded: “Hast thou 
not forbidden us to weep for the dead?” “No,” replied the 
prophet. ‘ ‘ I have forbidden ye to utter shrieks and outcries, 
to beat your faces and rend your garments; these are sugges¬ 
tions of the evil one; but tears shed for a calamity are as balm 
to the heart, and are sent in mercy.” 

He followed his child to the grave, where amidst the agonies 
of separation, he gave another proof that the elements of his 
religion were ever present to his mind. “ My son! my son!” 


182 


MAHOMET AND TITS SUCCESSORS. 


exclaimed he as the body was committed to the tomb, Ct say 
God is my Lord! the prophet of God was my father, and Islam- 
ism is my faith!” This was to prepare his child for the ques¬ 
tioning by examining angels, as to religious belief, which, 
according to Moslem creed, the deceased would undergo while 
in the grave.* 

An eclipse of the sun which happened about that time was 
interpreted by some of his zealous followers as a celestial sign 
of mourning for the death of Ibrahim; but the afflicted father 
rejected such obsequious flattery. “The sun and the moon,” 
said he, “are among the wonders of God, through which at 
times he signifies his will to his servant; but their eclipse has 
nothing to do either with the birth or death of any mortal.” 

The death of Ibrahim was a blow which bowed him toward 
the grave. His constitution was already impaired by the ex¬ 
traordinary excitements and paroxysms of his mind, and the 
physical trials to which he had been exposed; the poison, too, 
administered to him at Khaibar had tainted the springs of life, 
subjected him to excruciating pains, and brought on a prema¬ 
ture old age. His religious zeal took the alarm from the increase 
of bodily infirmities, and he resolved to expend his remaining 
strength in a final pilgrimage to Mecca, intended to serve as a 
model for all future observances of the kind. 

The announcement of his pious intention brought devotees 
from all parts of Arabia, to follow the pilgrim-prophet. The 
streets of Medina were crowded with the various tribes from 
the towns and cities, from the fastnesses of the mountains, and 
the remote parts of the desert, and the surrounding valleys 
were studded with their tents. It was a striking picture of the 
triumph of a faith, these recently disunited, barbarous, and 


* One of the funeral rites of the Moslems is for the Mulakken or priest to address 
the deceased when in the grave, in the following words: “ O servant of God! O son 
of a handmaid of God! know that, at this time, there will come down to thee two 
angels commissioned respecting thee and the like of thee; when they say to thee, 
‘Who is thy Lord!’ answer them. ‘God is my Lord;’ in truth, and when they ask 
thee concerning thy prophet, or the man who hath been sent unto you, say to them, 
‘ Mahomet is the apostle of God,’ with veracity, and when they ask thee concerning 
thy religion, say to them, ‘Islamism is my religion.’ And when they ask thee con¬ 
cerning thy hook of direction, say to them, ‘ The Koran is my book of direction, and 
the Moslems are my brothers;’ and when they ask thee concerning thy Kebla, say 
to them, ‘The Caaba is my Kebla, and I have lived and died in the assertion that 
there is no deity but God, and Mahomet is God’s apostle,' and they will say, ‘Sleep, 
O servant of God, in the protection of God!’ ’’— See Lane's Modern Egyptians, vol 
ii. p. 338. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 183 

warring tribes brought together as brethren, and inspired by 
one sentiment of religious zeal. 

Mahomet was accompanied on this occasion by his. nine 
wives, who were transported on litters. He departed at the 
head of an immense train, some say of fifty-five, others ninety, 
and others a hundred and fourteen thousand pilgrims. There 
was a large number of camels also, decorated with garlands of 
flowers and fluttering streamers, intended to be offered up in 
sacrifice. 

The first night’s halt was a few miles from Medina, at the 
village of Dhu’l Holaifa, where, on 'a former occasion, he and 
his followers had laid aside their weapons and assumed the 
pilgrim garb. Early on the following morning, after praying 
in the mosque, he mounted his camel, A1 Aswa, and entering 
the plain of Baida, uttered the prayer or invocation called in 
Arabic Talbijah, in which he was joined by all his followers. 
The following is the import of this solemn invocation: ‘ ‘ Here 
am I in thy service, oh God! Here am I in thy service! Thou 
hast no companion. To thee alone belongeth worship. From 
thee cometh all good. Thine alone is the kingdom. There is 
none to share it with thee.” 

This prayer, according to Moslem tradition, was uttered by 
the patriarch Abraham, when, from the top of the hill of Ku- 
beis, near Mecca, he preached the true faith to the whole hu¬ 
man race, and so wonderful was the power of his voice that it 
was heard by every living being throughout the world; inso¬ 
much that the very child in the womb responded, “Here am I 
in thy service, oh God!” 

In this way the pilgrim host pursued its course, winding in 
a lengthened train of miles, over mountain and valley, and 
making the deserts vocal at times with united prayers and 
ejaculations. There were no longer any hostile armies to im¬ 
pede or molest it, for by this time the Islam faith reigned se¬ 
renely over all Arabia. Mahomet approached the sacred city 
over the same heights which he had traversed in capturing it, 
and he entered through the gate Beni Scheiba, which still bears 
the name of The Holy. 

A few days after his arrival he was joined by Ali, who had 
hastened back from Yemen; and who brought with him a 
number of camels to be slain in sacrifice. 

As this was to be a model pilgrimage, Mahomet rigorously 
observed all the rites which he had continued in compliance 
with patriarchal usage, or introduced in compliance with reve- 


184 


Ifcl IIOMET AND NTS SUCCESSORS. 


lation. Being too weak and infirm to go on foot, he mounted 
his camel, and thus performed the circuits round the Caaba, 
and the journeyings to and fro, between the hills of Safa and 
Merwa. 

When the camels were to be offered up in sacrifice, he slew 
sixty-three with his own hand, one for each year of his age, 
and Ali, at the same time ; slew thirty-seven on his own ac* 
count. 

Mahomet then shaved his head, beginning on the right side 
and ending on the left. The locks thus shorn aWay were 
equally divided among his disciples, and treasured up as sacred 
relics. Khaled ever afterward wore one in his turban, and 
affirmed that it gave him supernatural strength in battle. 

Conscious that life was waning away within him, Mahomet, 
during this last sojourn in the sacred city of his faith, sought 
to engrave his doctrines deeply in the minds and hearts of his 
followers. For this purpose he preached frequently in the 
Caaba from the pulpit, or in the open air from the back- of his 
camel. “ Listen to my words,” would he say, “for I know 
not whether, after this year, we shall, ever meet here again. 
Oh, my hearers, I am but a man like yourselves; the angel of 
death may at any time appear, and I must obey his summons.” 

He would then proceed to inculcate not merely religious doc¬ 
trines and ceremonies, but rules for conduct in all the concerns 
of life, public and domestic; and the precepts laid down and 
enforced on this occasion have had a vast and durable influ¬ 
ence on the morals, manners, and habitudes of the whole Mos¬ 
lem world. 

It was doubtless in view of his approaching end, and in 
solicitude for the welfare of his relatives and friends after his 
death, and especially of his favorite Ali, who, he perceived, had 
given dissatisfaction in the conduct of his recent campaign in 
Yemen, that he took occasion, during a moment of strong ex¬ 
citement and enthusiasm among his hearers, to address to them 
a solemn adjuration. 

“ Ye believe,” said he, “ that there is but one God; that Ma¬ 
homet is his prophet and apostle; that paradise and hell are 
truths; that death and the resurrection are certain; and that 
there is an appointed time when all who rise from the grave 
must be brought to judgment.” 

They all answered, “We believe these things.” He then ad¬ 
jured them solemnly by these dogmas of their faith ever to 
hold his family, and especially Ali, in love and reverence. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


185 


“Whoever loves me,” said he, “let him receive Ali as his 
friend. May God uphold those who befriend him, and may he 
turn from his enemies.” 

It was at the conclusion of one of his discourses in the open 
air, from the back of his camel, that the famous verse of the 
Koran is said to have come down from heaven in the very 
voice of the Deity. ‘ ‘ Evil to those this day, who have denied 
your religion. Fear them not; fear me. This day I have per- 
fected your religion, and accomplished in you my grace. It is 
my good pleasure that Islamism be your faith.” 

On hearing these words, say the Arabian historians, the 
camel A1 Karwa, on which the prophet was seated, fell on its 
knees in adoration. These words, add they, were the seal and 
conclusion of the law, for after them there were no further 
revelations. 

Having thus fulfilled all the rites and ceremonies of pilgrim¬ 
age, and made a full exposition of his faith, Mahoniet bade a 
last farewell to his native city, and, putting himself at the 
head of his pilgrim army, set out on his return to Medina. 

As he came in sight of it, he lifted up his voice and ex¬ 
claimed, “ God is great! God is great! There is but one God; 
he has no companion. His is the kingdom. To him alone be- 
longeth praise. He is almighty. He hath fulfilled his prom¬ 
ise. He has stood by his servant, and alone dispersed his 
enemies. Let us return to our homes and worship and praise 
him!” 

Thus ended what has been termed the valedictory pilgrim¬ 
age, being the last made by the prophet. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

OF THE TWO FALSE PROPHETS AL ASWAD AND MOSEILMA. 

The health of Mahomet continued to decline after his return 
to Medina; nevertheless his ardor to extend his religious em¬ 
pire was nnabated, and he prepared, on a great scale, for the 
invasion of Syria and Palestine. While he was meditating 
foreign conquest, however, two rival prophets arose to dispute 
his sway in Arabia. One was named A1 Aswad, the other 
Moseilma; thpy received from the faithful the well-merited 
appellation of “ The two Liars.” 



186 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


A1 Aswad, a quick-witted man, and gifted with persuasive 
eloquence, was originally an idolater, then a convert to Islam- 
ism, from which he apostatized to set up for a prophet, and 
establish a religion of his own. His fickleness in matters of 
faith gained him the appellation of Ailhala, or “ The Weather¬ 
cock.” In emulation of Mahomet he pretended to receive 
revelations from heaven through the medium of two angels. 
Being versed in juggling arts and natural magic, he astonished 
and confounded the multitude with spectral illusions, which 
he passed off as miracles, insomuch that certain Moslem writ 
ers believe he was really assisted by two evil genii or demons. 
His schemes, for a time, were crowned with great success, 
which shows how unsettled the Arabs were in those days in 
matters of religion, and how ready to adopt any new faith. 

Budhan, the Persian whom Mahomet had continued as 
viceroy of Arabia Felix, died in this year; whereupon A1 
Aswad, now at the head of a powerful sect, slew Ills son and 
successor, espoused his widow after putting her father to 
death, and seized upon the reins of government. The people 
of Najran invited him to their city; the gates of Sanaa, the 
capital of Yemen, were likewise thrown open to him, so that, 
in a little while, all Arabia Felix submitted to his sway. 

The news of this usurpation found Mahomet suffering in the 
first stages of a dangerous malady, and engrossed by prepara¬ 
tions for the Syrian invasion. Impatient of any interruption 
to his plans, and reflecting that the whole danger and difficulty 
in question depended upon the life of an individual, he sent 
orders to certain of his adherents, who were about A1 Aswad, 
to make way with him openly or by stratagem, either way 
being justifiable against enemies of the faith, according to the 
recent revelation promulgated by Ali. Two persons under¬ 
took the task, less, however, through motives of religion than 
revenge. One, named Rais, had received a mortal offence 
from the usurper; the other, named Firuz the Dailemite, 
was cousin to A1 Aswad’s newly espoused wife and nephew 
of her murdered father. They repaired to the woman, whose 
marriage with the usurper had probably been compulsory, 
and urged upon her the duty, according to the Arab lav/ of 
blood, of avenging the deaths of her father and her former 
husband. With much difficulty they prevailed upon her to 
facilitate their entrance at the dead of night into the cham¬ 
ber of A1 Aswad, who was asleep. Firuz stabbed him in 
the throat with a poniard. The blow was not effectual A1 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


187 


Aswad started up, and his cries alarmed the guard. His wife, 
however, went forth and quieted them. '‘The prophet,” said 
she, “is under the influence of divine inspiration.” By this 
time the cries had ceased, for the assassins had stricken off 
the head of their victim. When the day dawned the standard 
of Mahomet floated once more on the walls of the city, and 
a herald proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, the death of A1 
Aswad, otherwise called the Liar and Impostor. His career of 
power began and was terminated within the space of four 
months. The people, easy of faith, resumed Islamism with as 
much facility as they had abandoned it. 

Moseilma, the other impostor, was an Arab of the tribe of 
Honeifa, and ruled over the city and province of Yamama, 
situated between the Bed Sea and the Gulf of Persia. In the 
ninth year of the Hegira he had come to Mecca at the head of 
an embassy from his tribe, and had made profession of faith 
between the hands of Mahomet; but, on returning to his own 
country, had proclaimed that God had gifted him likewise 
with prophecy, and appointed him to aid Mahomet in convert¬ 
ing the human race. To this effect he likewise wrote a Koran, 
which he gave forth as a volume of inspired truth. His creed 
was noted for giving the soul a humiliating residence in the 
region of the abdomen. Being a man of influence and address, 
he soon made hosts of converts among his credulous country¬ 
men. Rendered confident by success, he addressed an epistle 
to Mahomet, beginning as follows: 

“From Moseilma the prophet of Allah, to Mahomet the pro¬ 
phet of Allah! Come now, and let us make a partition of the 
world, and let half be thine and half be mine. ” 

This letter came also to the hands of Mahomet while bowed 
down by infirmities and engrossed by military preparations. 
He contented himself for the present with the following reply: 

“From Mahomet the prophet of God, to Moseilma the Liar! 
The earth is the Lord’s, and he giveth it as an inheritance to 
such of his servants as find favor in his sight. Happy shall 
those be who live in his fear.” 

In the urgency of other affairs, the usurpation of Moseilma 
remained unchecked. His punishment was reserved for a 
future day. 


188 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 


CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 

AN ARMY PREPARED TO MARCH AGAINST SYRIA—COMMAND GIVEN 
TO OSAMA—THE PROPHET’S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE TROOPS 
—HIS LAST ILLNESS—HIS SERMONS IN THE MOSQUE—HIS DEATH 
AND THE ATTENDING CIRCUMSTANCES. 

It was early in the eleventh year of the Hegira that, after 
unusual preparations, a powerful army was ready to march 
for the invasion of Syria. It would almost seem a proof of 
the failing powers of Mahomet’s mind, that he gave the com¬ 
mand of such an army, on such an expedition, to Osama, a 
youth but twenty years of age, instead of some one of his vet¬ 
eran and well-tried generals. It seems to have been a matter 
of favor, dictated by tender and grateful recollections. Osama 
was the son of Zeid, Mahomet’s devoted freedman, who had 
given the prophet such a signal and acceptable proof of devo¬ 
tion in relinquishing to him his beautiful wife Zeinab. Zeid 
had oontinued to the last the same zealous and self-sacrificing 
disciple, and had fallen bravely fighting for the faith in the 
battle of Muta. 

Mahomet was aware of the hazard of the choice he had made, 
and feared the troops might be insubordinate under so young 
a commander. In a general review, therefore, he exhorted 
them to obedience, reminding them that Osama’s father, Zeid, 
had commanded an expedition of this very kind, against the 
very same people, and had fallen by their hands; it was but a 
just tribute to his memory, therefore, to give his son an oppor¬ 
tunity of avenging his death. Then placing his banner in the 
hands of the youthful general, he called upon him to fight 
valiantly the fight of the faith against all who should deny the 
unity of Ood. The army marched forth that very day, and 
encamped at Djorf, a few miles from Medina; but circum¬ 
stances occurred to prevent its further progress. 

That very night Mahomet had a severe access of the malady 
which for some time past had affected him, and which was 
• ascribed by some to the lurking effects of the poison given to 
him at Khaibar It commenced with a violent pain in the 
head, accompanied by vertigo, and the delirium which seems 
to have mingled with all his paroxysms of illness. Starting up 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


189 


in the mid-watches of the night from a troubled dream, he 
called upon an attendant slave to accompany him, saying he 
was summoned by the dead who lay interred in the public 
burying-place of Medina to come and pray for them. Fol¬ 
lowed by the slave, he passed through the dark and silent city, 
where all were sunk in sleep, to the great burying-ground, 
outside of the walls. 

Arrived in the midst of the tombs, he lifted up his voice and 
made a solemn apostrophe to their tenants. ‘‘Rejoice, ye 
dwellers in the grave!” exclaimed he. “More peaceful is the 
morning to which ye shall awaken, than that which attends 
the living. Happier is your condition than theirs. God has 
delivered you from the storms with which they are threatened, 
and which shall follow one another like the watches of a 
stormy night, each darker than that which went before.” 

After praying for the dead, he turned and addressed his 
slave. “The choice is given me,” said he, “either to remain 
in this world to the end of time, in the enjoyment of all its 
delights, or to return sooner to the presence of God; and I 
have chosen the latter.” 

From this time his illness rapidly increased, though he en¬ 
deavored to go about as usual, and shifted his residence from 
day to day, with his different wives, as he had been accustomed 
to do. He was in the dwelling of Ma'imona, when the violence 
of his malady became so great, that he saw it must soon prove 
fatal. His heart now yearned to be with his favorite wife 
Ayesha, and pass with her the fleeting residue of life. With 
his head bound up, and his tottering frame supported by Ali 
and Fadhl, the son of A1 Abbas, he repaired to her abode. 
She, likewise, was suffering with a violent pain in the head, 
and entreated of him a remedy. 

‘ ‘ Wherefore a remedy ?” said he, ‘ ‘ Better that thou shouldst 
die before me. I could then close thine eyes, wrap thee in thy 
funeral garb, lay thee in the tomb, and pray for thee.” 

“Yes,” replied she, “and then return to my house and dwell 
with one of thy other wives, who would profit by my death.” 

Mahomet smiled at this expression of jealous fondness, and 
resigned himself into her care. His only remaining child, 
Fatima, the wife of Ali, came presently to see him. Ayesha 
used to say that she never saw any one resemble the prophet 
more in sweetness of temper, than this his daughter. Ha 
treated her always with respectful tenderness. When she 
came to him, he used to rise up, go toward her, take her by 


190 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the hand, and kiss it, and would seat her in his own place. 
Their meeting on this occasion is thus related by Ayesha, in 
the traditions preserved by Abulfeda. 

“ ‘ Welcome, my child! ’ said the prophet, and made her sit 
beside him. He then whispered something in her ear, at which 
she wept. Perceiving her affliction, he whispered something 
more, and her countenance brightened with joy. ‘ What is 
the meaning of this?’ said I to Fatima. ‘The prophet honors 
thee with a mark of confidence never bestowed on any of his 
wives.’ ‘I cannot disclose the secret of the prophet of God,’ 
replied Fatima.. Nevertheless, after his death, she declared 
that at first he announced to her his impending death; but, 
seeing her weep, consoled her with the assurance that she 
would shortly follow him, and become a princess in heaven, 
among the faithful of her sex.” 

In the second day of his illness, Mahomet was tormented by 
a burning fever, and caused vessels of water to be emptied on 
his head and over his body, exclaiming, .amidst his paroxysms, 
“ Now I feel the poison of Khaibar rending my entrails.” 

When somewhat relieved, he was aided in repairing to the 
mosque, which was adjacent to his residence. Here, seated in 
his chair, or pulpit, he prayed devoutly; after which, address¬ 
ing the congregation, which was numerous, “If any of you,” 
said he, ‘ ‘ have aught upon his conscience, let him speak out, 
that I may ask God’s pardon for him.” 

Upon this a man, who had passed for a devout Moslem, stood 
forth and confessed himself a hypocrite, a liar, and a weak 
disciple. “Out upon thee!” cried Omar, “why dost thou 
make known what God hath suffered to remain concealed ?” 
But Mahomet turned rebukingly to Omar. “ Oh son of Khat- 
tab,” said he, “ better is it to blush in this world, than suffer in 
the next.” Then lifting his eyes to heaven, and praying for 
the self-accused, ‘ ‘ Oh God, ” exclaimed he, ‘ ‘ give him rectitude 
and faith, and take from him all weakness in fulfilling such of 
thy commands as his conscience dictates.” 

Again addressing the congregation, “Is there any one among 
you,” said he, “whom I have stricken; here is my back, let 
him strike me in return. Is there any one whose character J 
have aspersed; let him now cast reproach upon* me. Is there 
anyone from whom I have taken aught unjustly; let him now 
come forward and be indemnified.” 

Upon this, a man among the throng reminded Mahomet of a 
debt of three dinars of silver, and was instantly repaid vvith 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


191 


Interest. “Much easier is it,” said the prophet, “to bear pun¬ 
ishment in this world than throughout eternity.” 

He now prayed fervently for the faithful who had fallen by 
his side in the battle of Ohod, and for those who had suffered 
for the faith in other battles; interceding with them in 
virtue of the pact which exists between the living and the 
dead. 

After this he addressed the Mohadjerins or Exiles, who had 
accompanied him from Mecca, exhorting them to hold in honor 
the Ansarians, or allies of Medina. ‘ 1 The number of believers, ” 
said he, ‘ ‘ w T ill increase, but that of the allies never can. They 
were my family; with whom I found a home. Do good to 
those who do good to them, and break friendship with those 
who are hostile to them.” 

He then gave three parting commands: 

First .—Expel all idolaters from Arabia. 

Second.— Allow all proselytes equal privileges with your¬ 
selves. 

Third .—Devote yourselves incessantly to prayer. 

His sermon and exhortation being finished, he was affection¬ 
ately supported back to the mansion of Ayesha, but was so ex¬ 
hausted on arriving there that he fainted. 

His malady increased from day to day, apparently with in¬ 
tervals of delirium; for he spoke of receiving visits from the 
angel Gabriel, who came from God to inquire after the state of 
his health; and told him that it rested with himself to fix his 
dying moment; the angel of death being forbidden by Allah to 
enter his presence without his permission. 

In one of his paroxysms he called for writing implements, 
that he might leave some rules of conduct for his followers. 
His attendants were troubled, fearing he might do something 
to impair the authority of the Koran. Hearing them debate 
among themselves, whether to comply with his request, he 
ordered them to leave the room, and when they returned said 
nothing more on the subject. • 

On Friday, the day of religious assemblage, he prepared, not¬ 
withstanding his illness, to officiate in the mosque, and had 
water again poured over him to refresh and strengthen him, 
but on making an effort to go forth, fainted. On recovering, 
he requested Abu Beker to perform the public prayers; observ¬ 
ing, “Allah has given his servant the right to appoint whom 
he pleases in his place.” It was afterward maintained by some 
that he thus intended to designate this long-tried friend and ad- 


192 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


herent as his successor in office; but Abu Beker shrank from 
construing the words too closely. 

Word was soon brought to Mahomet, that the appearance of 
Abu Beker in the pulpit had caused great agitation, a rumor 
being circulated that the prophet was dead. Exerting his re¬ 
maining strength, therefore, and leaning on the shoulders of 
Ali and A1 Abbas, he made his way into the mosque, where his 
appearance spread joy throughout the congregation. Abu 
Beker ceased to pray, but Mahomet bade him proceed, and tak¬ 
ing his seat behind him in the pulpit, repeated the prayers after 
him. Then addressing the congregation, “I have heard,” said 
he, “that a rumor of the death of your prophet filled you with 
alarm; but has any prophet before me lived forever, that ye 
think I would never leave you ? Everything happens accord¬ 
ing to the will of God, and has its appointed time, which is not 
to be hastened nor avoided. I return to him who sent me; and 
my last command to you is, that ye remain united; that ye 
love, honor, and uphold each other; that ye exhort each other 
to faith and constancy in belief, and to the performance of 
pious deeds; by these alone men prosper; all else leads to de¬ 
struction.” 

In concluding his exhortation he added, “ I do but go before 
you; you will soon follow me. Death awaits us all; let no one 
then seek to turn it aside from me. My fife has been for your 
good; 'so will be my death.” 

These were the last words he spake in public; he was again 
conducted back by Ali and Abbas to the dwelling of Ayesha. 

On a succeeding day there was an interval during which he 
appeared so well that Ali, Abu Beker, Omar, and the rest of 
those who had been constantly about him, absented themselves 
for a time, to attend to their affairs. Ayesha alone remained 
with him. The interval was but illusive. His pains returned 
with redoubled violence. Finding death approaching he gave 
orders that all his slaves should be restored to freedom, and all 
the money in the house distributed among the poor; then rais¬ 
ing his eyes to heaven, “God be with me in the death struggle,” 
exclaimed he. 

Ayesha now sent in haste for her father and Hafza. Left 
alone with Mahomet, she sustained his head on her lap, watch¬ 
ing over him with tender assiduity, and endeavoring to soothe 
his dying agonies. From time to time he would dip his hand in 
a vase of water, and with it feebly sprinkle his face. At length 
raising his eyes and gazing upward for a time with unmoving 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 193 

eyelids, “Oh Allah!” ejaculated he, in broken accents, “be it 
so!—among the glorious associates in paradise!” 

“ I knew by this,” said Ayesha, who related the dying scene, 
“ that his last moment had arrived, and that he had made 
choice of supernal existence.” 

In a few moments his hands were cold, and life was extinct. 
Ayesha laid his head upon the pillow, and beating her head 
and breast, gave way to loud lamentations. Her outcries 
brought the other wives of Mahomet, and their clamorous 
grief soon made the event known throughout the city. Con¬ 
sternation seized upon the people, as if some prodigy had hap¬ 
pened. All business was suspended. Thd army which had 
struck its tents was ordered to halt, and Osama, whose foot 
was in the stirrup for the march, turned his steed to the gates 
of Medina, and planted his standard at the prophet’s door. 

The multitude crowded to contemplate the corpse, and agi¬ 
tation and dispute prevailed even in the chamber of death. 
Some discredited the evidence of their senses. “ How can he 
be dead?” cried they. “Is he not our mediator with God? 
How then can he be dead? Impossible! He is but in a trance, 
and carried up to heaven like Isa (Jesus) and the other 
prophets.” 

The throng augmented about the house, declaring with 
clamor that the body should not be interred; when Omar, who 
had just heard the tidings, arrived. He drew his scimetar, 
and pressing through the crowd, threatened to strike off the 
hands and feet of any one who should affirm that the prophet 
was dead. “He has but departed for a time,” said he, “as 
Musa (Moses) the son of Imram, went up forty days into the 
mountain; and like him he will return again.” 

Abu Beker, who had been in a distant part of the city, 
arrived in time to soothe the despair of the people, and calm 
the transports of Omar. Passing into the chamber, he raised 
the cloth which covered the corpse, and kissing the pale face 
of Mahomet, “Oh thou!” exclaimed he, “who wert to me 
as my father and my mother; sweet art thou even in death, 
and living odors dost thou exhale! Now livest thou in ever¬ 
lasting bliss, for never will Allah subject thee to a second 
death. ” 

Then covering the corpse, he went forth and endeavored to 
silence Omar, but finding it impossible, he addressed the mul¬ 
titude : “ Truly if Mahomet is the sole object of your adoration, 
he is dead; but if it be God you worship, he cannot die. Ma 


194 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


hornet was but the prophet of God, and has shared the fate of 
the apostles and holy men who have gone before him. Allah, 
himself has said in his Koran that Mahomet was but his am¬ 
bassador, and was subject to death. Wliat then! will you 
turn the heel upon him, and abandon his doctrine because ho 
is dead ? Remember your apostasy harms not God, but insures 
your own condemnation; while the blessings of God will be 
poured out upon those who continue faithful to him.” 

The people listened to Abu Beker with tears and sobbings, 
and as they listened, their despair subsided. Even Omar was 
convinced but not consoled, throwing himself on the earth, 
and bewailing the -death of Mahomet, whom he remembered 
as his commander and his friend. 

The death of the prophet, according to the Moslem historians 
Abulfeda and A1 Jannabi, took place on his birthday, when he 
had completed his sixty-third year. It was in the eleventh 
year of the Hegira, and the 632d year of the Christian era. 

The body was prepared for sepulture by several of the dear¬ 
est relatives and disciples. They affirmed that a marvellous 
fragrance which, according to the evidence of his wives and 
daughters, emanated from his person during life, still contin¬ 
ued; so that, to use the words of Ah, “ it seemed as if he were, 
at the same time, dead and living. ” 

The body having been washed and perfumed, was wrapped 
in three coverings; two white, and the third of the striped 
cloth of Yemen. The whole was then perfumed with amber, 
musk, aloes, and odoriferous herbs. After this it was exposed 
in public, and seventy-two prayers were offered up. 

The body remained three days unburied, in compliance with 
oriental custom, and to satisfy those who still believed in the 
possibility of a trance. When the evidences of mortality 
could no longer be mistaken, preparations were made for inter¬ 
ment. • A dispute now arose as to the place of sepulture. The 
Mohadjerins or disciples from Mecca contended for that city, 
as being the place of his nativity; the Ansarians claimed for 
Medina, as his asylum and the place of his residence, during 
the last ten years of his life. A third party advised that his 
remains should be transported to Jerusalem, as the place of 
sepulture of the prophets. Abu Beker, whose word had 
always the greatest weight, declared it to have been the 
expressed opinion of Mahomet, that a prophet should be buried 
in the place where he died. This in the present instance was 
complied with to letter, for a grave was digged in the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


195 

house of Ayesha, beneath the very bed on which Mahomet had 
expired. 

Note— The house of Ayesha was immediately adjacent to the mosque; which 
was at that time a humble edifice with way walls, and a roof thatched with palm- 
leaves, and supported by the trunks cf trees. It has since been included in a spa- 
cious temple, on the plan of a colonnade, inclosing an oblong square, 165 paces by 
130, open to the heavens, with four gates of entrance. The colonnade, of several 
rows of pillars, of various sizes, covered with stucco and gaily painted, supports a 
succession of small white cupolas on the four sides of the square. At the four cor¬ 
ners are lofty and tapering minarets. 

Near the south-east corner of the square is an inclosure, surrounded by an iron 
railing, painted green, wrought with filagree work and interwoven with brass ana 
gilded wire; admitting no view of the interior, excepting through small windows, 
about six inches square. This inclosure, the great resort of pilgrims, is called the 
Hadg'ira, and contains the tombs of Mahomet, and his two friends and early suc¬ 
cessors, Abu Beker and Omar. Above this sacred inclosure rises a lofty dome 
surmounted with a gilded globe and crescent, at the first sight of which, pilgrims, 
as they approach Medina, salute the tomb of the prophet with profound inclina¬ 
tions of the body and appropriate prayers. The marvellous tale, so long consid¬ 
ered veritable, that the coffin of Mahomet remained suspended in the air without 
any support, and which Christian writers accounted for by supposing that it was of 
iron, and dexterously placed midway between two magnets, is proved to be an idle 
fiction. 

The mosque has undergone changes. It was at one time partially thrown down 
and destroyed in an awful tempest, but was rebuilt by the Soldan of Egypt. It has 
been enlarged and embellished by various Caliphs, and in particular by Waled I., 
under whom Spain was invaded and conquered. It was plundered of its immense 
votive treasures by the Wahabees when they took and pillaged Medina. It is now 
maintained, though with diminished splendor, under the care of about thiidy Agas, 
whose chief is called Sheikh A1 Haram, or chief of the Holy House. He is the 
principal personage in Medina. Pilgrimage to Medina, though considered a most 
devout and meritorious act, is not imposed on Mahometans, like pilgrimage to 
Mecca, as a religious duty, and has much declined in modern days. 

The foregoing particulars are from Burckhardt, who gained admission into Me¬ 
dina, as well as into Mecca, in disguise and at great peril; admittance into these 
cities being prohibited to all but Moslems. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 

PERSON AND CHARACTER OF MAHOMET, AND SPECULATIONS ON 
HIS PROPHETIC CAREER. 

Mahomet, according to accounts handed down by tradition 
<rom his contemporaries, v T as of the middle stature, square 
built and sinewy, with large hands and feet. In his youth he 
was uncommonly strong and vigorous; in the latter part of his 
life he inclined to corpulency. His head was capacious, well 
shaped, and well set on a neck which rose like a pillar from his 



190 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


ample chest. His forehead was high, broad at the temples 
and crossed by veins extending down to the eyebrows, which 
swelled whenever he was angry or excited. He had an oval 
face, marked and expressive features, an aquiline nose, black 
eyes, arched eyebrows, which nearly met, a mouth large and 
flexible, indicative of eloquence; very white teeth, somewhat 
parted and irregular; black hair, which waved without a curl 
on his shoulders, and a long and very full beard. 

His deportment, in general, was calm and equable; he some¬ 
times indulged in pleasantry, but more commonly was grave 
and dignified; though he is said to have possessed a smile of 
captivating sweetness. His complexion was more ruddy than 
is usual with Arabs, and in his excited and enthusiastic mo¬ 
ments there was a glow and radiance in his countenance, 
which his disciples magnified into the supernatural light of 
prophecy. 

His intellectual qualities were undoubtedly of an extra¬ 
ordinary kind. He had a quick apprehension, a retentive 
memory, a vivid imagination, and an inventive genius. Ow¬ 
ing but little to education, he had quickened and informed his 
mind by close observation, and stored it with a great variety 
of knowledge concerning the systems of religion current in his 
day, or handed down by tradition from antiquity. His ordi¬ 
nary discourse was grave and sententious, abounding with 
those aphorisms and apologues so popular among the Arabs; 
at times he was excited and eloquent, and his eloquence was 
aided by a voice musical and sonorous. 

He was sober and abstemious in his diet, and a rigorous 
observer of fasts. He indulged in no magnificence of apparel, 
the ostentation of a petty mind; neither was his simplicity in 
dress affected, but the result of a real disregard to distinction 
from so trivial a source. His garments were sometimes of 
wool, sometimes of the striped cotton of Yemen, and were 
often patched. He wore a turban, for he said turbans were 
worn by the angels; and in arranging it he let one end hang 
down between his shoulders, which he said was the way they 
wore it. He forbade the wearing of clothes entirely of silk; 
but permitted a mixture of thread and silk. He forbade also 
red clothes and the use of gold rings. He wore a seal ring of 
silver, the engraved part under his finger close to the palm of 
his hand, bearing the inscription, “ Mahomet the messenger of 
Goa.” He was scrupulous as to personal cleanliness, and ob¬ 
served frequent ablutions. In some respects he was a volup* 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


197 


fcuary. “ There are two things in this world,” would he say, 

which delight me, women and perfumes. These two things 
rejoice my eyes and render me more fervent in devotion.” 
From his extreme cleanliness, and the use of perfumes and of 
sweet-scented oil for his hair, probably arose that sweetness 
and fragrance of person, which his disciples considered innate 
and miraculous. His passion for the sex had an influence over 
all his affairs. It is said that when in the presence of a beauti¬ 
ful female, he was continually smoothing hi^ brow and adjust¬ 
ing his hair, as if anxious to appear to advantage. 

The number of his wives is uncertain. Abulfeda, who writes 
with more caution than other of the Arabian historians, limits 
it to fifteen, though some make it as much as twenty-five. At 
the time of his death he had nine, each in her separate dwell¬ 
ing, and all in the vicinity of the mosque at Medina. The plea 
alleged for his indulging in a greater number of wives than he 
permitted to his followers, was a desire to beget a race of pro¬ 
phets for his people. If such indeed were his desire, it was 
disappointed. Of all his children, Fatima the wife of Ali alone 
survived him, and she died within a short time after his death. 
Of her descendants none excepting her eldest son Hassan ever 
sat on the throne of the Caliphs. 

In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and 
strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, with 
equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affabil¬ 
ity with which he received them, and listened to thrfr com¬ 
plaints. 

He was naturally irritable, but had brought his temper under 
great control, so that even in the self-indulgent intercourse of 
domestic life he was kind and tolerant. “ I served him from 
the time I was eight years old,” said his servant Anas, “ and he 
never scolded me for any thing, though things were spoiled by 
me.” 

The question now occurs, Was he the unprincipled impostor 
that he has been represented? Were all his visions and revela¬ 
tions deliberate falsehoods, and was his whole system a tissue 
of deceit? In considering this question we must bear in mind 
that he is not chargeable with many extravagancies which 
exist in his name. Many of the visions and revelations handed 
down as having been given by him are spurious. The miracles 
ascribed to him are all fabrications of Moslem zealots. He 
expressly and repeatedly disclaimed all miracles excepting the 
Koran; which, considering its incomparable merit, and the 


198 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


.way in which it had come down to him from heaven, he pro* 
nounced the greatest of miracles. And here we must indulge 
a few observations on this famous document. While zealous 
Moslems and some of the most learned doctors of the faith 
draw proofs of its divine origin from the inimitable excellence 
of its style and composition, and the avowed illiteracy of 
Mahomet, less devout critics have pronounced it a chaos of 
beauties and defects; without method or arrangement; full of 
obscurities, incoherencies, repetitions, false versions of scrip¬ 
tural stories, and direct contradictions. The truth is that the 
Koran as it now exists is not the same Koran delivered by 
Mahomet to his disciples, but has undergone many corruptions 
and interpolations. The revelations contained in it were given 
at various times, in various places, and before various persons; 
sometimes they were taken down by his secretaries or disciples 
on parchment, on palm-leaves, or the shoulder-blades of sheep, 
and thrown together in a chest, of which one of his wives had 
charge; sometimes they were merely treaasured up in the 
memories of those who heard them. No care appears to have 
been taken to systematize and arrange them during his life; 
and at his death they remained in scattered fragments, many 
of them at the mercy of fallacious memories. It was not until 
some time after his death that Abu Beker undertook to have 
them gathered together and transcribed. Zeid Ibn Thabet, 
who had been one of the secretaries of Mahomet, was employed 
for the purpose. He professed to know many parts of the 
Koran by heart, having written them down under the dicta¬ 
tion of the prophet; other parts he collected piecemeal from 
various hands, written down in the rude way we have men¬ 
tioned, and many parts he took down as repeated to him by 
various disciples who professed to have heard them uttered by 
the prophet himself. The heterogeneous fragments thus col¬ 
lected were thrown together without selection, without chrono¬ 
logical order, and without system of any kind. The volume 
thus formed during the Caliphat of Abu Beker was transcribed 
by different hands, and many professed copies put in circula¬ 
tion and dispersed throughout the Moslem cities. So many 
errors, interpolations, and contradictory readings soon crept 
into these copies, that Othman, the third Caliph, called in the 
various manuscripts, and forming what he pronounced the 
genuine Koran, caused all the others to be destroyed. 

This simple statement may account for many of the inco¬ 
herencies, repetitions, and other discrepancies charged upon 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


199 


this singular document. Mahomet, as has justly been ob¬ 
served, may have given the same precepts,, or related the same 
apologue at different times, to different persons in different 
words; or various persons may have been present at one time, 
and given various versions of his words; and reported his apo¬ 
logues and scriptural stories in different ways, according to 
their imperfect memoranda or fallible recollections. Many 
revelations given by him as having been made in foregone 
times to the prophets, his predecessors, may have been re¬ 
ported as having been given as relations made to himself. It 
has been intimated that Abu Beker, in the early days of his 
Caliphat, may have found it politic to interpolate many things 
in the Koran, calculated to aid him in emergencies, and con¬ 
firm the empire of Islamism. What corruptions and interpo¬ 
lations may have been made by other and less scrupulous 
hands, after the prophet’s death, we may judge by the daring 
liberties of the kind taken by Abdallah Ibn Saad, one of his 
secretaries, during his lifetime. 

From all these circumstances it will appear, that even the 
documentary memorials concerning Mahomet abound with 
vitiations, while the traditional are full of fable. These in¬ 
crease the difficulty of solving the enigma of his character and 
conduct. His history appears to resolve itself into two grand 
divisions. During the first part, up to the period of middle 
life, we cannot perceive what adequate object he had to gain 
by the impious and stupendous imposture with which he 
stands charged. Was it riches? His marriage with Cadijah 
had already made him wealthy, and for years preceding his 
pretended vision he had manifested no desire to increase his 
store. Was it distinction? He already stood high in his 
native place, as a man of intelligence and probity. He was of 
the illustrious tribe of Koreish, and of the most honored branch 
of that tribe. Was it power? The guardianship of the Caaba, 
end with it the command of the sacred city, had been for gen¬ 
erations in his immediate family, and his situation and circum¬ 
stances entitled him to look forward with confidence to that 
exalted trust. In attempting to subvert the faith in which he 
had been brought up, he struck at the root of all these advan¬ 
tages. On that faith were founded the fortunes and dignities 
of his family. To assail it must draw on himself the hostility 
of his kindred, the indignation of his fellow-citizens, and the 
horror and odium of all Y *8 countrymen, who were worshippers 
at the Caaba. 


200 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Was there anything brilliant in the outset of his prophetic 
career to repay hiip. for these sacrifices, and to lure him on? 
On the contrary, it was begun in doubt and secrecy. For 
years it was not attended by any material success. In propor¬ 
tion as he made known his doctrines, and proclaimed his reve¬ 
lations, they subjected him to ridicule, scorn, obloquy, and 
finally to an inveterate persecution; which ruined the fortunes 
of himself and his friends; compelled some of his family and 
followers to take refuge in a foreign land; obliged him to hide 
from sight in his native city, and finally drove him forth a 
fugitive to seek an uncertain home elsewhere. Why should 
he persist for years in a course of imposture which was thus 
prostrating all his worldly fortunes, at a time of life when it 
was too late to build them up anew? 

In the absence of sufficient worldly motives, we are com¬ 
pelled to seek some other explanation of his conduct in this 
stage of his most enigmatical history; and this we have en¬ 
deavored to set forth in the early part of this work; where we 
have shown his enthusiastic and visionary spirit gradually 
wrought up by solitude, fasting, prayer, and meditation, and 
irritated by bodily disease into a state of temporary delirium, 
in which he fancies he receives a revelation from heaven, and 
is declared a prophet of the Most High. We cannot but think 
there was self-deception in this instance; and that he believed 
in the reality of the dream or vision; especially after his doubts 
had been combated by the zealous and confiding Cadijah, and 
the learned and crafty Waraka. 

Once persuaded of his divine mission to go forth and preach 
the faith, all subsequent dreams and impulses might be con¬ 
strued to the same purport; all might be considered intimations 
of the divine will, imparted in their several ways to him as a 
prophet. We find him repeatedly subject to trances and ec¬ 
stasies in times of peculiar agitation and excitement, when ho 
may have fancied himself again in communication with the 
Deity, and these were almost always followed by revela¬ 
tions. 

The general tenor of his conduct up to the time of his flight 
from Mecca, is that of an enthusiast acting under a species of 
mental delusion; deeply imbued with a conviction of his being 
a divine agent for religious reform; and there is something 
striking and sublime in the luminous path which his enthu¬ 
siastic spirit struck out for itse'lf through the bewildering 
maze of adverse faiths and wild traditions; the pure and spiri- 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCOESSOliS. 


201 


tual worship of the one true God, which he sought to substitute 
for the blind idolatry of his childhood. 

All the parts of the Koran supposed to have been promul¬ 
gated by him at this time, incoherently as they have come 
down to us, and marred as their pristine beauty must he in 
passing through various hands, are of a pure and elevated 
character, and breathe poetical if not religious inspiration. 
They show that he had drunk deep of the living waters of 
Christianity, and if he had failed to imbibe them in their 
crystal purity, it might be because he had to drink from 
broken cisterns, and streams troubled and perverted by those 
who should have been their guardians. The faith he had 
hitherto inculcated was purer than that held forth by some of 
the pseudo Christians of Arabia, and his life, so far, had been 
regulated according to its tenets. 

Such is our view of Mahomet and his conduct during the 
early part of his career, while he was a persecuted and ruined 
man in Mecca. A signal change, however, took place, as we 
have shown in the foregoing chapters, after his flight to 
Medina, when, in place of the mere shelter and protection 
which he sought, he finds himself revered as a prophet, impli¬ 
citly obeyed as a chief, and at the head of a powerful, growing, 
and warlike host of votaries. From this time worldly pas¬ 
sions and worldly schemes too often give the impulse to his 
actions, instead of that visionary enthusiasm which, even if 
mistaken, threw a glow of piety on his earlier deeds. The old 
doctrines of forbearance, long-suffering, and resignation, are 
suddenly dashed aside; he becomes vindictive toward those 
who have hitherto oppressed him, and ambitious of extended 
rule. His doctrines, precepts, and conduct become marked by 
contradictions, and his whole course is irregular and unsteady. 
His revelations, henceforth, are so often opportune and fitted 
to particular emergencies, that we are led to doubt his sin¬ 
cerity, and that he is any longer under the same delusion 
concerning them. Still, it must be remembered, as we have 
shown, that the records of these revelations are not always to 
be depended upon. What he may have uttered as from his 
own will may have been reported as if given as the will of 
God. Often, too, as we have already suggested, he may have 
considered his own impulses as divine intimations; and that, 
being an agent ordained to propagate the faith, all impulses 
and conceptions toward that end might be part of a continued 
and divine inspiration. 


202 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


If we are far from considering Mahomet the gross and im¬ 
pious impostor that some have represented him, so also are we 
indisposed to give him credit for vast forecast, and for that 
deeply concerted scheme of universal conquest which has been 
ascribed to him. He was, undoubtedly, a man of great genius 
and a suggestive imagination, but it appears to us that he was, 
in a great degree, the creature of impulse and excitement, and 
very much at the mercy of circumstances. His schemes grew 
out of his fortunes, and not his fortunes out of his schemes. 
He was forty years of age before he first broached his doc¬ 
trines. He suffered year after year to steal away before he 
promulgated them out of his own family. When he fled from 
Mecca thirteen years had elapsed from the announcement of 
his mission, and from being a wealthy merchant he had sunk 
to be a ruined fugitive. When he reached Medina he had no 
idea of the worldly power that awaited him; his only thought 
was to build a humble mosque where he might preach; and his 
only hope that he might be suffered to preach with impunity. 
When power suddenly broke upon him he used it for a time in 
petty forays and local feuds. His military plans expanded 
with his resources, but were by no means masterly, and were 
sometimes unsuccessful. They were not struck out with bold¬ 
ness, nor executed with decision; but were often changed in 
deference to the opinions of warlike men about him, and some¬ 
times at the suggestion of inferior minds, who occasionally led 
him wrong. Had he, indeed, conceived from the outset the 
idea of binding up the scattered and conflicting tribes of 
Arabia into one nation by a brotherhood of faith, for the pur¬ 
pose of carrying out a scheme of external conquest, he would 
have been one of the first of military projectors; but the idea 
of extended conquest seems to have been an after-tliought pro¬ 
duced by success. The moment he proclaimed the religion of 
the sword, and gave the predatory Arabs a taste of foreign 
plunder, that moment he was launched in a career of conquest, 
which carried him forward with its own irresistible impetus. 
The fanatic zeal with which he had inspired his followers did 
more for his success than his military science; their belief in 
his doctrine of predestination produced victories which no 
military calculation could have anticipated. In his dubious 
outset, as a prophet, lie had been encouraged by the crafty 
counsels of his scriptural oracle Waraka; in his career as a 
conqueror he had Omar, Khaled, and other fiery spirits by his 
side to urge him on, and to aid him in managing the tremen- 


MAHOMET AN1) HIS SUCCESSORS . 


203 


dous power which he had evoked into action. Even with all 
their aid, he had occasionally to avail himself of his super¬ 
natural machinery as a prophet, and in so doing may have re¬ 
conciled himself to the fraud by considering the pious end to 
be obtained. 

His military triumphs awakened no pride nor vainglory, as 
they would have dene had they been effected for selfish pur¬ 
poses. In the time of his greatest power, he maintained the 
same simplicity of manners and appearance as in the days of 
his adversity. So far from affecting regal state, he was dis¬ 
pleased if, on entering a room, any , unusual testimonial of 
respect were shown hkn. If he aimed at universal dominion, 
it was the dominion of the faith: as to the temporal rule which 
grew up in his hands, as he used it without ostentation, so he 
took no step to perpetuate it in his family. 

The riches which poured in upon him from tribute and the 
spoils of war were expended in promoting the victories of the 
faith, and in relieving the poor among its votaries; insomuch 
that his treasury was often drained of its last coin. Omar Ibn 
A1 Hareth declares that Mahomet, at his death, did not leave a 
golden dinar nor a silver dirhem, a slave nor a slave girl, nor 
anything but his gray mule Daldal, his arms, and the ground 
which he bestowed upon his wives, his children, and the poor. 
“Allah,” says an Arabian writer, “offered him the keys 
of all the treasures of the earth; but he refused to accept 
them.” 

It is this perfect abnegation of self, connected with this 
apparently heartfelt piety, running throughout the various 
phases of his fortune, which perplex one in forming a just esti¬ 
mate of Mahomet’s character. However he betrayed the alloy 
of earth after he had worldly power at his command, the 
early aspirations of his spirit continually returned and bore 
him above all earthly things. Prayer, that vital duty of 
Islamism, and that infallible purifier of the soul, was his con¬ 
stant practice. “ Trust in God,” was his comfort and support 
in times of trial and despondency. On the clemency of God, 
we are told, he reposed all his hopes of supernal happiness. 
Ayesha relates that on one occasion she inquired of him, ‘ ‘ Oh 
prophet, do none enter paradise but through God’s mercy?” 
“None—none—none!” replied he, with earnest and emphatic 
repetition. “But you, oh prophet, will not you enter excepting 
through his compassion?” Then Mahomet put his hand upon 
his head, and replied tVrce times, with great solemnity, 


204 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


“ Neither shall I enter paradise unless God cover with his 
mercy!” 

When he hung over the death-bed of his infant son Ibrahim, 
resignation to the will of God was exhibited in his conduct 
under this keenest of afflictions; and the hope of soon rejoin¬ 
ing his child in paradise was his consolation. When he fol¬ 
lowed him to the grave, he invoked his spirit, in the awful 
examination of the tomb, to hold fast to the foundations of the 
faith, the unity of God, and his own mission as a prophet. 
Even in his own dying hour, when there could he no longer a 
worldly motive for deceit, he still breathed the same religious 
devotion, and the same belief in his apostolic mission. The 
last words that trembled on his lips ejaculated h trust of soon 
entering into blissful companionship with the prophets who 
had gone before him. 

It is difficult to reconcile such ardent, persevering piety, with 
an incessant system of blasphemous imposture; nor such pure 
and elevated and benignant precepts as are contained in the 
Koran, with a mind haunted by ignoble passions, and devoted 
to the grovelling interests of mere mortality; and we find no 
other satisfactory mode of solving the enigma of his character 
and conduct, than by supposing that the ray of mental hallu¬ 
cination which flashed upon his enthusiastic spirit during his 
religious ecstasies in the midnight cavern of Mount Hara, con¬ 
tinued more or less to bewilder him with a species of monoma¬ 
nia to the end of his career, and that he died in the delusive 
belief of his mission as a prophet. 


APPENDIX. 

OF THE ISLAM FAITH. 

In an early chapter of this work we have given such particu¬ 
lars of the faith inculcated by Mahomet as we deemed impor¬ 
tant to the understanding of the succeeding narrative: we now, 
though at the expense of some repetition, subjoin a more com¬ 
plete summary, accompanied by a few observations. 

The religion of Islam, as we observed on the before-men¬ 
tioned occasion, is divided into two parts: Faith and Practice: 
—and first of faith. This is distributed under six different 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


20 ? 


heads, or articles, viz.: 1st, faith in God; 2d, in his angels; 3d, 
in his Scriptures or Koran; 4th, in his prophets; 5th, in the 
resurrection and final judgment; 6th,, in predestination. Of 
these we will briefly treat in the order we have enumerated 
them. 

Faith in God. —Mahomet inculcated the belief that there is, 
was, and ever will be, one only God, the creator of all things; 
who is single, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, all merciful, 
and eternal. The unity of God was specifically and strongly 
urged, in contradistinction to the Trinity of the Christians. It 
was designated, in the profession of faith, by raising one finger, 
and exclaiming, “ La illaha il Allah!” There is no God but God 
—to which was added, “ Mohamed Resoul Allah!” Mahomet is 
the prophet of God. 

Faith in Angels. —The beautiful doctrine of angels, or min¬ 
istering spirits, which was one of the most ancient and uni¬ 
versal of oriental creeds, is interwoven throughout the Islam 
system. They are represented as ethereal beings, created from 
fire, the purest of elements, perfect in form and radiant in 
beauty, but without sex; free from all gross or sensual passion, 
and all the appetites and infirmities of frail humanity; and 
existing in perpetual and unfading youth. They are various 
in their degrees and duties, and in their favor with the Deity. 
Some worship around the celestial throne; others perpetually 
hymn the praises of Allah; some are winged messengers to 
execute his orders, and others intercede for the children of 
men. 

The most distinguished of this heavenly host are four arch¬ 
angels. Gabriel, the angel of revelations, who writes down the 
divine decrees; Michael, the champion, who fights the battles 
of the faith; Azrail, the angel of death; and Israfil, who holds 
the awful commission to sound the trumpet on the day of 
resurrection. There was another angel named Azazil, the same 
as Lucifer, once the most glorious of the celestial band: but he 
became proud and rebellious. When God commanded his 
angels to worship Adam, Azazil refused, saying, “ Why should 
I, whom thou hast created of fire, bow down to one whom thou 
hast formed or clay ?” For this offence he was accursed and 
cast forth from paradise, and his name changed to Eblis, which 
signifies despair. In revenge of his abasement, he works all 
kinds of mischief against the children of men, and inspires 
them with disobedience and impiety. 

Among the angels of inferior rank is a class called Moak' 


206 ' MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

kibat; two of whom keep watch upon each mortal, one on the 
right hand, the other on the left, taking note of every word 
and action. At the close of each day they fly up to heaven 
with a written report, and are replaced by two similar angels 
on the following day. According to Mahometan tradition, 
every good action is recorded ten times by the angel on the 
right; and if the mortal commit a sin, the same benevolent 
spirit says to the angel on the left, ‘ ‘ Forbear for seven hours to 
record it; peradventure he may repent and pray and obtain 
forgiveness.” 

Besides the angelic orders Mahomet inculcates a belief in 
spiritual beings called Gins or Genii, who, though likewise cre¬ 
ated of fire, partake of the appetites and frailties of the children 
of the dust, and like them are ultimately liable to death. By 
beings of this nature, which haunt the solitudes pf the desert, 
Mahomet, as we have shown, professed to have been visited 
after his evening orisons in the solitary valley of A1 Naklah. 

When the angel Azazil rebelled and fell and became Satan or 
Eblis, he still maintained sovereignty over these inferior spirits; 
who are divided by Orientalists into Dives and Peri: the for¬ 
mer ferocious and gigantic; the latter delicate and gentle, sub 
sisting on perfumes. It would seem as if the Peri were all of 
the female sex, though on this point there rests obscurity. 
From these imaginary beings it is supposed the European 
fames are derived. 

Besides these there are other demi-spirits called Tacwins or 
Fates, being winged females of beautiful forms, who utter 
oracles and defend mortals from the assaults and machinations 
of evil demons. 

There is vagueness and uncertainty about all the attributes 
given by Mahomet to these half-celestial beings; his ideas on 
the subject having been acquired from various sources. His 
whole system of intermediate spirits has a strong though indis¬ 
tinct infusion of the creeds and superstitions of the Hebrews, 
the Magians, and the Pagans or Sabeans. 

The third article of faith is a belief in the Koran, as a book 
of divine revelation. According to the Moslem creed a book 
was treasured up in the seventh heaven, and had existed there 
from all eternity, in which were written down all the decrees 
of God and all events, past, present, or to come. Transcripts 
from these tablets of the divine will were brought down to the 
lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, and by him revealed to 
Mahomet from time to time, in portions adapted to some 


MAIIOMET AND 1IIS SUCCESSORS. 207 

event or emergency. Being the direct words of God, they were 
all spoken in the first person. 

Of the way in which these revelations were taken down or 
treasured up by secretaries and disciples, and gathered to¬ 
gether by Abu Beker after the death of Mahomet, we have 
made sufficient mention. The compilation, for such in fact it 
is, forms the Moslem code of civil and penal as well as religious 
law, and is treated with the utmost reverence by all true 
believers. A zealous pride is shown in having copies of it 
splendidly bound and ornamented. An inscription on the 
cover forbids any one to touch it who isomclean, and it is con¬ 
sidered irreverent, in reading it, to hold it below the girdle. 
Moslems swear by it, and take omens from its pages, by open¬ 
ing it and reading the first text that meets the eye. With all 
its errors and discrepancies, if we consider it mainly as the 
work of one man, and that an unlettered man, it remains a 
stupendous monument of solitary legislation. 

Besides the Koran or written law, a number of precepts and 
apologues which casually fell from the Ups of Mahomet were 
collected after his death from ear-witnesses, and transcribed 
into a book called the Sonna or Oral Law. This is held equally 
sacred with the Koran by a sect of Mahometans thence called 
Sonnites; others reject it as apocryphal; these last are termed 
Schiites. Hostilities and persecutions have occasionally taken 
place between these sects almost as virulent as those which, 
between Catholics and Protestants, have disgraced Christian¬ 
ity. The Sonnites are distinguished by white, the Schiites by 
red turbans; hence the latter have received from their antago¬ 
nists the appellation of Kussilbachi, or Red Heads. 

It is remarkable that circumcision, which is invariably prac¬ 
tised by the Mahometans, and forms a distinguishing rite of 
their faith, to which all proselytes must conform, is neither 
mentioned in the Koran nor the Sonna. It seems to have been 
a general usage in Arabia, tacitly adopted from the Jews, and 
is even said to have been prevalent throughout the East before 
the time of Moses. 

It is said that the Koran forbids the making likenesses of 
any living thing, which has prevented the introduction of por¬ 
trait-painting among Mahometans. The passage of the Koran, 
however, which is thought to contain the prohibition, seems 
merely an echo of the second commandment, held sacred by 
Jews and Christians, not to form images or pictures for wor¬ 
ship. One of Mahomet’s standards was a black eagle. Among 


208 


MAHOMET ANJ) IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


the most distinguished Moslem ornaments of the Alhambra at 
Granada is a fountain supported by lions carved of stone, and 
some Moslem monarchs have had their effigies, stamped on 
their coins. 

Another and an important mistake with regard to the system 
of Mahomet is the idea that it denies souls to the female sex, 
and excludes them from paradise. This error arises from his 
omitting to mention their enjoyments in a future state, while 
he details those of his own sex with the minuteness of a volup¬ 
tuary. The beatification of virtuous females is alluded to in 
the 56th Sura of the Koran, and also in other places, although 
from the vagueness of the language a cursory reader might 
suppose the Houris of paradise to be intended. 

The fourth article of faith relates to the prophets. Their 
number amounts to two hundred thousand, but only six are 
super eminent, as having brought new laws and dispensations 
upon earth, each abrogating those previously received where- 
ever they varied or were contradictory. These six distin¬ 
guished prophets were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, 
and Mahomet. 

The fifth article of Islam faith is on the resurrection and 
the final judgment. On this awful subject Mahomet blended 
some of the Christian belief with certain notions current among 
the Arabian Jews. One of the latter is the fearful tribunal of 
the Sepulchre. When Azrail, the angel of death, has per¬ 
formed his office, and the corpse has been consigned to the 
tomb, two black angels, Munkar and Nakeer, of dismal and 
appalling aspect, present themselves as inquisitors; during 
whose scrutiny the soul is reunited to the body. The defunct, 
being commanded to sit up, is interrogated as to the two great 
points of faith, the unity of God, and the divine mission of 
Mahomet, and likewise as to the deeds done by him during 
life; and his replies are recorded in books against the day of 
judgment. Should they be satisfactory, his soul is gently 
drawn forth from his lips, and his body left to its repose; 
should they be otherwise, he is beaten about the brows with 
.iron clubs, and his soul wrenched forth with racking tortures. 
Kor the convenience of this awful inquisition, the Mahometans 
generally deposit their dead in hollow or vaulted sepulchres; 
merely wrapped in funeral clothes, but not placed in cof¬ 
fins. 

The space of time between death and resurrection is called 
Berzak, or the Interval. During this period the body rests in 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 209 

the grave, but the soul has a foretaste, in dreams or visions, of 
its future doom. 

The souls of prophets are admitted at once into the full frui¬ 
tion of paradise. Those of martyrs, including all who die in 
battle, enter into the bodies or crops of green birds, who feed 
on the fruits and drink of the streams of paradise. Those of 
the great mass of true believers are variously disposed of, but, 
according to the most received opinion, they hover, in a state 
of seraphic tranquillity, near the tombs. Hence the Moslem 
usage of visiting the graves of their departed friends and rel¬ 
atives, in the idea that their souls nre the gratified witnesses 
these testimonials of affection. 

Many Moslems believe that the souls of the truly faithful as¬ 
sume the forms of snow-white birds, and nestle beneath the 
throne of Allah; a belief in accordance with an ancient super¬ 
stition of the Hebrews, that the souls of the just will have a 
place in heaven under the throne of glory. 

With regard to the souls of infidels, the most orthodox opi¬ 
nion is that they will be repulsed by angels both from heaven 
and earth, and cast into the cavernous bowels of the earth, 
there to await in tribulation the day of judgment. 

The day of resurrection will be preceded by signs and por¬ 
tents in heaven and earth. A total eclipse of the moon; a 
change in the course of the sun, rising in the west instead of 
the east; wars and tumults; a universal decay of faith; the 
advent of Antichrist; the issuing forth of Gog and Magog to 
desolate the world; a great smoke, covering the whole earth— 
these and many more prodigies and omens affrighting and 
harassing the souls of men, and producing a wretchedness of 
spirit and a weariness of life; insomuch that a man passing by 
a grave shall envy the quiet dead, and say, “ Would to God I 
were in thy place!” 

The last dread signal of the awful day will be the blast of a 
trumpet by the archangel Israfil. At the soimd thereof the 
earth will tremble; castles and towers will be shaken to the 
ground, and mountains levelled with the plains. The face of 
heaven will be darkened; the firmament will melt away, and 
the sun, the moon, and stars will fall into the sea. The ocean 
will be either dried up, or will boil and roll in fiery billows. 

At the sound of that dreadful trump a panic will fall on the 
human race; men will fly from their brothers, their parents, 
and their wives; and mothers, in frantic terror, abandon the 
infant at the breast. The savage beasts of the forests and 


210 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the tame animals of the pasture will forget their fierceness 
and their antipathies, and herd together in affright. 

The second blast of the trumpet is the blast of extermination. 
At that sound, all creatures in heaven and on earth and in the 
waters under the earth, angels and genii and men and animals, 
all will die; excepting the chosen few especially reserved by 
Allah. The last to die will be Azrail, the angel of death! 

Forty days, or, according to explanations, forty years of 
continued rain will follow this blast of extermination; then 
will be sounded for the third time the trumpet of the arch¬ 
angel Israfil; it is the call to judgment! At the sound of this 
blast the whole space between heaven and earth will be filled 
with the souls of the dead flying in quest of their respective 
bodies. Then the earth will open; and there will be a rattling 
of dry bones, and a gathering together of scattered limbs; the 
very hairs will congregate together, and the whole body be re¬ 
united, and the soul will re-enter it, and the dead will rise from 
mutilation, perfect in every part and naked as when born. 
The infidels will grovel with their faces on the earth, but the 
faithful will walk erect; as to the truly pious, they will be 
borne aloft on winged camels, white as milk, with saddles of 
fine gold. 

Every human being "will then be put upon his trial as to the 
manner in which he has employed his faculties, and the good 
and evil actions of his life. A mighty balance will be poised 
by the angel Gabriel; in one of the scales, termed Light, will 
be placed his good actions; in the other, termed Darkness, his 
evil deeds. An atom or a grain of mustard-seed will suffice to 
turn this balance; and the nature of the sentence will depend 
on the preponderance of either scale. At that moment retri¬ 
bution will be exacted for every wrong and injury. He who 
has wronged a fellow-mortal will have to repay him with a 
portion of his own good deeds, or, if he have none to boast of, 
will have to take upon himself a proportionate weight of the 
other’s sins. 

The trial of the balance will be succeeded by the ordeal of the 
bridge. The whole assembled multitude will have to follow 
Mahomet across the bridge A1 Serat, as fine as the edge of a 
scimetar, which crosses the gulf of Jehennam or Hell. Infidels 
and sinful Moslems will grope along it darkling and fall into 
the abyss; but the-faithful, aided by a beaming light, will cross 
with the swiftness of birds and enter the realms of paradise. 
The idea of this bridge, and of the dreary realms of Jehennam, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 211 

is supposed to have been derived partly from the Jews, hut 
chiefly from the Magians. 

Jehennam is a region fraughf with all kinds of horrors. The 
very trees have writhing serpents for branches, bearing for 
fruit the heads of demons. We forbear to dwell upon the par¬ 
ticulars of this dismal abode, which are given with painful and 
often disgusting minuteness. It is described as consisting of 
seven stages, one below the other, and varying in the nature 
and intensity of torment. The first stage is allotted to Athe¬ 
ists, who deny creator and creation, and believe the world to 
be eternal. The second for Manicheans and others that admit 
two divine principles; and for the Arabian idolaferSsof the era 
of Mahomet. The third is for the Brahmins of India; the fourth 
for the Jews; the fifth for Christians; the sixth for the Magians 
or Ghebers of Persia; the seventh for hypocrites, who profess 
without believing in religion. 

The fierce angel Thabeck, that is to say, the executioner, pre¬ 
sides over this region of terror. 

We must observe that the general nature of Jehennam, and 
the distribution of its punishments, have given rise to various 
commentaries and expositions among the Moslem doctors. It 
is maintained by some, and it is a popular doctrine, that none 
of the believers in Allah and his prophets will be condemned to 
eternal punishment. Their sins will be expiated by propor¬ 
tionate periods of suffering, varying from nine hundred to 
nine thousand years. 

Some of the most humane among the Doctors contend 
against eternity of punishment to any class of sinners, saying 
that, as God is all merciful, even infidels will eventually be 
pardoned. Those who have an intercessor, as the Christians 
have in Jesus Christ, will be first redeemed. The liberality of 
these worthy commentators, however, does not extend so far 
as to admit them into paradise among true believers; but con¬ 
cludes that, after long punishment, they will be relieved from 
their torments by annihilation. 

Between Jehennam and paradise is A1 Araf or the Partition, 
a region destitute of peace or pleasure, destined for the recep¬ 
tion of infants, lunatics, idiots, and such other beings as have 
done neither good nor evil. For such, too, whose good and 
evil deeds balance each other; though these may be admitted 
to paradise through the intercession of Mahomet, on perform¬ 
ing an act of adoration, to turn the scales in their favor. It is 
said that the tenants of this region can converse with their 


212 


MAHOMEl AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


neighbors on either hand, the blessed and the condemned; and 
that A1 Araf appears a paradise to those in hell and a hell to 
those in paradise. 

At, Janet, or the Garden.— When the true believer has 
passed through all his trials, and expiated all his sins, he re¬ 
freshes himself at the Pool of the Prophet. This is a lake of 
fragrant water, a month’s journey in circuit, fed by the river 
A1 Cauther, which flows from paradise. The water of this lake 
is sweet as honey, cold as snow, and clear as crystal; he who 
once tastes of it will never more be tormented by thirst; a 
blessing dwelt upon with peculiar zest by Arabian writers, ac- 
customed'to the parching thirst of the desert. 

After the true believer has drunk of this water of life, the 
gate of paradise is opened to him by the angel Rushvan. The 
same prolixity and minuteness which occur in the description 
of Jehennam, are lavished on the delights of paradise, until 
the imagination is dazzled and confused by the details. The 
soil is of the finest wheaten flour, fragrant with perfumes, 
and strewed with pearls and hyacinths instead of sands and 
pebbles. 

Some of the streams are of crystal purity, running between 
green banks enamelled with flowers; others are of milk, of 
wine and honey; flowing over beds of musk, between margins 
of camphire, covered with moss and saffron! The air is sweet¬ 
er than the spicy gales of Sabea, and cooled by sparkling 
fountains. Here, too, is Taba, the wonderful tree of life, so 
large that a fleet horse would need a hundred years to 
cross its shade. The boughs are laden with every variety of 
delicious fruit, and bend to the hand of those who seek to 
gather. 

The inhabitants of this blissful garden are clothed in raiment 
sparkling with jewels; they wear crowns of gold enriched with 
pearls and diamonds, and dwell in sumptuous palaces or silken 
pavilions, reclining on voluptuous couches. Here every be¬ 
liever will have hundreds of attendants, bearing dishes and 
goblets of gold, to serve him with every variety of exquisite 
viand and beverage. He will eat without satiety, and drink 
without inebriation; the last morsel and the last drop will bo 
equally relished with the first; he will feel no repletion, and 
need no evacuation. 

The air will resound with the melodious voice of Israfil, and 
che songs of the daughters of paradise; the very rustling of the 
trees will produce ravishing harmony, while myriads of bells 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 213 

hanging among their branches, will be put in dulcet motion by 
airs from the throne of Allah. 

Above all, the faithful will be blessed with female society to 
the full extent even of oriental imaginings. Besides the wives 
he had on earth, who will rejoin him in all their pristine 
charms, he will be attended by the Hur al Oyun, or Houris, so 
called from them large black eyes; resplendent beings, free from 
every human defect or frailty; perpetually retaining their 
youth and beauty, and renewing their virginity. Seventy-two 
of these are allotted to every believer. The intercourse with 
them will be fruitful or not according to their wish, and the 
offspring will grow within an hour to the same stature with the 
parents. 

That the true believer may be fully competent to the enjoy¬ 
ments of this blissful region, he will rise from the grave in the 
prime of manhood, at the age of thirty, of the stature of Adam, 
which was thirty cubits; with all his faculties improved to a 
state of preternatural perfection, with the abilities of a hundred 
men, and with desires and appetites quickened rather than 
sated by enjoyment. 

These and similar delights are promised to the meanest of the 
faithful; there are gradations of enjoyment, however, as of 
merit; but, as to those prepared for the most deserving, Ma¬ 
homet found the powers of description exhausted, and was 
fain to make use of the text from Scripture, that they should 
be such things “as eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, 
neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.” 

The expounders of the Mahometan law differ in their opinions 
as to the whole meaning of this system of rewards and punish¬ 
ments. One set understanding everything in a figurative, the 
other in a literal sense. The former insist that the prophet 
spake in parable, in a manner suited to the coarse perceptions 
and sensual natures of his hearers; and maintain that the joys 
of heaven will be mental as well as corporeal; the resurrection 
being of both soul and body. The soul will revel in a super¬ 
natural development and employment of all its faculties; in a 
knowledge of all the arcana of nature; the full revelation of 
everything past, present, and to come. The enjoyments of the 
body will be equally suited to its various senses, and perfected 
to a supernatural degree. 

The same expounders regard the description of Jehennam as 
equally figurative; the torments of the soul consisting in the 
anguish of perpetual remorse for past crimes, and deep and 


214 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


ever-increasing despair for the loss of heaven; those of the body 
in excruciating and never-ending pain. 

The other doctors, who construe everything in a literal 
sense, are considered the most orthodox, and their sect is be¬ 
yond measure the most numerous. Most of the particulars in 
the system of rewards and punishments, as has been already 
observed, have close affinity to the superstitions of the Magians 
and the Jewish Eabbins. The Houri, or black-eyed nymphs, 
who figure so conspicuously in the Moslem’s paradise, are said 
to be the same as the Huram Behest of the Persian Magi, and 
Mahomet is accused by Christian investigators of having pur¬ 
loined much of his description of heaven from the account of 
the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse; with such variation as 
is used by knavish jewellers, when they appropriate stolen 
jewels to their own use. 

The sixth and last article of the Islam faith is Predestina¬ 
tion, and on this Mahomet evidently reposed his chief depend¬ 
ence for the success of his military enterprises. He inculcated 
that every event had been predetermined by God, and written 
down in the eternal tablet previous to the creation of the world. 
That the destiny of every individual, and the hour of his death, 
were irrevocably fixed, and could neither be varied nor evaded 
by any effort of human sagacity or foresight. Under this per¬ 
suasion, the Moslems engaged in battle without risk; and, as 
death in battle was equivalent to martyrdom, and entitled 
them to an immediate admission into paradise, they had in 
either alternative, death or victory, a certainty of gain. 

This doctrine, according to which men by their own free will 
can neither avoid sin nor avert punishment, is considered by 
many Mussulmen as derogatory to the justice and clemency of 
God; and several sects have sprung up, who endeavor to soften 
and explain away this perplexing dogma; but the number of 
these doubters is small, and they are not considered orthodox. 

The doctrine of Predestination was one of those timely reve¬ 
lations to Mahomet, that were almost miraculous from their 
seasonable occurrence. It took place immediately after the 
disastrous battle of Ohod, in which tnany of his followers, and 
among them his uncle Hamza, were slain. Then it was, in a 
moment of gloom and despondency, when his followers around 
him were disheartened, that he promulgated this law, telling 
them that every man must die at the appointed hour, whether 
in bed or in the field of battle. He declared, moreover, that the 
angel Gabriel had announced to him the reception of Hamza 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


215 


into the seventh heaven, with the title of Lion of God and of 
the Prophet. He added, as he contemplated the dead bodies, 
“I am witness for these, and for all who have been slain for 
the cause of God, that they shall appear in glory at the resur¬ 
rection, with their wounds brilliant as vermilion and odoriferous 
as musk.” 

What doctrine could have been devised more calculated to 
hurry forward, in a wild career of conquest, a set of ignorant.- 
and predatory soldiers than this assurance of booty if they sur¬ 
vived, and paradise if they fell?* It rendered almost irresisti 
ble the Moslem arms; but it likewise contained the poison that 
was to destroy their dominion. From the moment the succes¬ 
sors of the prophet ceased to be aggressors and conquerors, and 
sheathed the sword definitively, the doctrine of predestination 
began its baneful work. Enervated by peace, and the sensuality 
permitted by the Koran—which so distinctly separates its doc¬ 
trines from the pure and self-denying religion of the Messiah— 
the Moslem regarded every reverse as preordained by Allah, 
and inevitable; to be borne stoically, since human exertion- and 
foresight were vain. “ Help thyself and God will help thee,” 
was a precept never in force with the followers of Mahomet, 
and its reverse nas been their fate. The crescent has waned 
before the cross, and exists in Europe, where it was once so 
mighty, only by the suffrage, or rather the jealousy, of the 
great Christian powers, probably ere long to furnish another 
illustration, that “ they that take the sword shall perish with 
the sword.” 


RELIGIOUS PRACTICE. 

The articles' of religious practice are fourfold: Prayer, in¬ 
cluding ablution, Alms, Fasting, Pilgrimage. 

Ablution is enjoined as preparative to prayer, purity of 
body being considered emblematical of purity of soul. It is 
prescribed in the Koran with curious precision. The face, 
arms, elbows, feet, and a fourth part of the head, to be washed 
once; the hands, mouth, and nostrils, three times, the ears to 
be moistened with the residue of the water used for the head, 
and the teeth to be cleaned with a brush. The ablution to 
commence on the right and terminate on the left; in washing 


* The reader may recollect that a belief in predestination, or destiny, was en¬ 
couraged by Napoleon, and bad much influence on his troops. 



216 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the hands and feet to begin with the fingers and toes; where 
water is not to be had, fine sand may be used. 

Prayer is to be performed five times every day, viz.: the 
first in the morning, before sunrise; the second at noon; the 
third in the afternoon, before sunset; the fourth in the even¬ 
ing, between sunset and dark; the fifth between twilight and 
the first watch, being the vesper prayer. A sixth prayer is 
volunteered by many between the first watch of the night and 
the dawn of day. These prayers are but repetitions of the 
same laudatory ejaculation, “ God is great! God is powerful! 
God is all powerful!” and are counted by the scrupulous upon 
a string of beads. They may be performed at the mosque, or 
in any clean place. During prayer the eyes are turned to the 
Eebla, or point of the heaven in the direction of Mecca; which 
is indicated in every mosque by a niche called A1 Mehrab, and 
externally by the position of the minarets and doors. Even 
the postures to be observed in prayer are prescribed, and the 
most solemn act of adoration is by bowing the forehead to the 
ground. Females in praying are not to stretch forth their 
arms, tout to fold them on their bosoms. They are not to make 
as profound inflections as the men. They are to pray in a low 
and gentle tone of voice. They are not permitted to accom¬ 
pany the men to the mosque, lest the minds of the worshippers 
should be drawn from their devotions. In addressing them¬ 
selves to God, the faithful are enjoined to do so with humility; 
putting aside costly ornaments and sumptuous apparel. 

Many of the Mahometan observances with respect to prayer 
were similar to those previously maintained by the Sabeans; 
others agreed with the ceremonials prescribed by the Jewish 
Rabbins. Such were the postures, inflections, and prostra¬ 
tions, and the turning of the face toward the Eebla, which, 
however, with the Jews, was in the direction of the temple at 
Jerusalem. 

Prayer, with the Moslem, is a daily exercise; but on Friday 
there is a sermon in the mosque. This day was generally held 
sacred among oriental nations as the day on which man was 
created. The Sabean idolaters consecrated it to Astarte or 
Venus, the most beautiful of the planets and brightest of the 
stars. » Mahomet adopted it as his Sabbath, partly perhaps 
from early habitude, but chiefly to vary from the Saturday of 
the Jews and Sunday of the Christians. 

The second article of religious practice is Charity, or the 
giving of alms. There are two kinds of alms, viz.: those pre- 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS . 


217 


scribed by law, called Zacat, like tithes in the Christian 
church, to be made in specified proportions, whether in money, 
wares, cattle, corn, or fruit; and voluntary gifts, termed Sada- 
kat, made at the discretion of the giver. JCvery Moslem is 
enjoined, in one way or the other, to dispense a tenth of his 
revenue in relief of the indigent and distressed. 

The third article of practice is Fasting, also supposed to 
have been derived from the Jews. In each year for thirty 
days,‘during the month Rhamadan, the true believer is to ab¬ 
stain rigorously, from the rising to the setting of the sun, from 
meat and drink, baths, perfumes, the intercourse of the sexes, 
and all other gratifications and delights of the senses. This is 
considered a great triumph of self-denial, mortifying and sub¬ 
duing the several appetites, and purifying both body and soul. 
Of these three articles of practice the Prince Abdalasis used 
to say, “ Prayer leads us half way to God; fasting conveys us 
to his threshold, but alms conduct us into his presence.” 

Pilgrimage is the fourth grand practical duty enjoined 
upon Moslems. Every true believer is bound to make one pil¬ 
grimage to Mecca in the course of his life either personally or 
by proxy. In the latter case his name must be mentioned in 
every prayer offered up by his substitute. 

Pilgrimage is incumbent only on free persons of mature age, 
sound intellect, and who have health and wealth enough to 
bear the fatigues and expenses of the journey. The pilgrim 
before his departure from home arranges all his affairs, public 
and domestic, as if preparing for his death. 

On the appointed day, which is either Tuesday, Thursday, 
or Saturday, as being propitious for the purpose, he assembles 
his wives, children, and all his household, and devoutly com¬ 
mends them and all his concerns to the care of God during his 
holy enterprise. Then passing one end of his turban beneath 
his chin to the opposite side of his head, like the attire of a 
nun, and grasping a stout staff of bitter almonds, he takes 
leave of his household, and sallies from the apartment, ex¬ 
claiming, “ In the name of God I undertake this holy work, 
confiding in his protection. I believe in him, and place in 
his hands my actions and my life.” 

On leaving the portal he turns his face toward the Kebla, 
repeats certain passages of the Koran, and adds, “I turn my 
face to the Holy Caaba, the throne of God, to accomplish the 
pilgrimage commanded by his law, and which shall draw me 
near to him.” 


218 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


He finally puts Lis foot in the stirrup, mounts into the sad¬ 
dle, commends himself again to God, almighty, all-wise, all- 
merciful, and sets forth on his pilgrimage. The time of 
departure is always calculated so as to insure an arrival at 
Mecca at the beginning of the pilgrim month Dhu’l-hajji. 

Three laws are to he observed throughout this pious journey: 

1. To commence no quarrel. 

2. To bear meekly all harshness and reviling. 

3. To promote peace and good-will among his companions in 
the caravan. 

He is, moreover, to be liberal in his donations and charities 
throughout his pilgrimage. 

When arrived at some place in the vicinity of Mecca, he 
allows his hair and nails to grow, strips himself to the skin, 
and assumes the Ihram or pilgrim garb, consisting of two 
scarfs, without seams or decorations, and of any stuff except¬ 
ing silk. One of these is folded round the loins, the other 
thrown over the neck and shoulders, leaving the right arm 
free. The head is uncovered, but the aged and infirm are per¬ 
mitted to fold something round it in consideration of alms 
given to the poor. Umbrellas are allowed as a protection 
against the sun, and indigent pilgrims supply their place by a 
rag on the end of a staff. 

The instep must be bare; and peculiar sandals are provided 
for the purpose, or a piece of the upper leather of the shoe is 
cut out. The pilgrim, when thus attired, is termed A1 Moh- 
rem. 

The Ihram of females is an ample cloak and veil, enveloping 
the whole person, so that, in strictness, the wrists, the ankles, 
and even the eyes should be concealed. 

When once assumed, the Ihram must be worn until the pil¬ 
grimage is completed, however unsuited it may be to the sea¬ 
son or the weather. While wearing it, the pilgrim must 
abstain from all licentiousness of language; all sensual inter* 
course; all quarrels and acts of violence; he must not even 
take the life of an insect that infests him; though an exception 
is made in regard to biting dogs, to scorpions, and birds of prey. 

On arriving at Mecca,Hie leaves his baggage in some shop, 
and,without attention to any worldly concern, repairs straight* 
way to the Caaba, conducted by one of the Metowefs or guides, 
who are always at hand to offer their services to pilgrims. 

Entering the mosque by the Bab el Salam, or Gate of Salu¬ 
tation, he makes four prostrations, and repeats certain prayers 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


219 


as he passes under the arch. Approaching the Caaba, he 
makes four prostrations opposite the Black Stone, which he 
then kisses; or, if prevented by the throng, he touches it with 
his right hand, and kisses that. Departing from the Black 
Stone, and keeping the building on his left hand, he makes the 
seven circuits, the three first quickly, the latter four with slow 
and solemn pace. Certain prayers are repeated in a low voice, 
and the Black Stone kissed, or touched, at the end of every 
circuit. 

The Towaf, or procession, round the Caaba was an ancient 
ceremony, observed long before the time of Mahomet, and per¬ 
formed by both sexes entirely naked. Mahomet prohibited 
this exposure, and prescribed the Ihram, or pilgrim dress. 
The female Hajji walk the Towaf generally during the night; 
though occasionally they perform it mingled with the men 
in the daytime.* 

The seven circuits being completed, the pilgrim presses his 
breast against the wall between the Black Stone and the door 
of the Caaba, and with outstretched arms prays for pardon of 
his sms. 

He then repairs to the Makam, or station of Abraham, makes 
four prostrations, prays for the intermediation of the Patri¬ 
arch, and thence to the well Zem Zem, and drinks as much of 
the water as he can swallow. 

During all this ceremonial the uninstructed Hajji has his 
guide or Metowef close at his heels, muttering prayers for him 
to repeat. He is now conducted out of the mosque by the gate 
Bab el Zafa to a slight ascent about fifty paces distant, called 
the Hill of Zafa, when, after uttering a prayer with uplifted 
hands, he commences the holy promenade, called the Saa or 
Say. This lies through a straight and level street, called A1 
Messa, six hundred paces in length, lined with shops like a 
? 3 azaar, and terminating at a place called Merowa. The walk 
of the Say is in commemoration of the wandering of Hagar 
over the same ground, in search of water for her child Isli- 
mael. The pilgrim, therefore, walks at times slowly, with an 
inquisitive air, then runs in a certain place, and again walks 
gravely, stopping at times and looking anxiously back. 

Having repeated the walk up and down this street seven 
times, the Hajji enters a barber’s shop at Merowa; his head is 
shaved, his nails pared, the barber muttering prayers and the 


* Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia, vol. i. p. 260. Lond. edit., 1829. 




220 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


pilgrim repeating them all the time. The paring and shearing 
are then buried in consecrated ground, and the most essential 
duties of the pilgrimage are considered as fulfilled.* 

„ On the ninth of the month A1 Dhu’l-hajji, the pilgrims make 
a hurried and tumultuous visit to Mount Arafat, where they 
remain until sunset; then pass the night in prayer at an Ora¬ 
tory, called Mozdalifa, and before sunrise next morning repair 
to the valley of Mena, where they throw seven stones at each 
of three pillars, in imitation of Abraham, and some say also 
of Adam, who drove away the devil from this spot with 
stones, when disturbed by him in his devotions. 

Such are the main ceremonies which form this great Moslem 
rite of pilgrimage; but, before concluding this sketch of Islam 
faith, and closing this legendary memoir of its founder, we 
cannot forbear to notice one of his innovations, which has en- 
tailed perplexity on all his followers, and particular inconven- 
ience on pious pilgrims. 

The Arabian year consists of twelve lunar months, contain¬ 
ing alternately thirty and twenty-nine days, and making three 
hundred and fifty-four in the whole, so that eleven days were 
lost in every solar year. To make up the deficiency, a thir¬ 
teenth or wandering month was added to every third year, 
previous to the era of Mahomet, to the same effect as one day 
is gadded in the Christian calendar to every leap-year. Maho¬ 
met, who was uneducated and ignorant of astronomy, re¬ 
trenched this thirteenth or intercalary month, as contrary to 
the divine order of revolutions of the moon, and reformed the 
calendar by a divine revelation during his last pilgrimage. 
This is recorded in the ninth sura or chapter of the Koran, to 
the following effect: 

“ For the number of months is twelve, as was ordained by 
Allah, and recorded on the eternal tables f on the day wherein 
he created the heaven and the earth. 


* The greater part of the particulars concerning Mecca and Medina, and their re¬ 
spective pilgrimages, are gathered from the writings of that, accurate and indefati¬ 
gable traveller, Burckhardt, who, in the disguise of a pilgrim, visited these shrines 
and complied with all the forms and ceremonials. His works throw great light 
upon the manners and customs of the East, and practice of the Mahometan faith, 
The facts related by Burckhardt have been collated with those of other travellers 
and writers, and many particulars have been interwoven with them from other 
sources. 

t The eternal tables or tablet was of white pearl, extended from east to west and 
from earth to heaven. All the decrees of God were recorded on it, and all events 
past, present, and to came, to all eternity. It was guarded by angels. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 221 

1 '* Transfer not a sacred month unto another month, for 
verily it is an innovation of the infidels.” 

The number of days thus lost amount in 33 years to 363. It 
becomes necessary, therefore, to add an intercalary year at 
the end of each thirty-third year to reduce the Mahometan 
into the Christian era. 

One great inconvenience arising from this revelation of the 
prophet is, that the JMoslem months do not indicate the season, 
as they commence earlier by eleven days every year. This at 
certain epochs is a sore grievance to the votaries to Mecca, as 
the great pilgrim month Dhu’l-hajji, during which they are 
compelled to wear the Ihram, or half-naked pilgrim garb, runs 
the round of the seasons, pccurring at one time in the depth of 
winter, at another in the fervid heat of summer. 

Thus Mahomet, though according to legendary history he 
could order the moon from the firmament and make her re¬ 
volve about the sacred house, could not control her monthly 
revolutions; and found that the science of numbers is superior 
even to the gift of prophecy, and se f s miracles at defiance; 


PART II. 


PREFACE. 

It Is the intention of the author in the following pages to 
trace the progress of the Moslem dominion from the death of 
Mahomet, in a.d. 622, to the invasion of Spain, in a.d. 710. In 
this period, which did not occupy fourscore and ten years, and 
passed within the lifetime of many an aged Arab, the Moslems 
extended their empire and their faith over the wide regions or 
Asia and Africa, subverting the empire of the Khosrus, sub¬ 
jugating great territories in India, establishing a splendid sea,u 
of power in Syria, dictating to the conquered kingdom of the 
Pharaohs, overrunning the whole northern coast of Africa, 
scouring the Mediterranean with their ships, carrying their 
conquests in one direction to the very walls of Constantinople, 
and in another to the extreme limits ot Mauritania; in a word, 
trampling down all the old dynasties which once held haughty 
and magnificent sway in the East. The whole presents a 
striking instance of the triumph of fanatic enthusiasm over 
disciplined valor, at a period when the invention of firearms 
had not reduced war to a matter<of almost arithmetical calcu¬ 
lation. There is also an air of wild romance about many of 
the events recorded in this narrative, owing to the character 
of the Arabs, and their fondness for stratagems, daring ex¬ 
ploits, and individual achievements of an extravagant nature. 
These have sometimes been softened, if not suppressed, by 
cautious historians; but the author has found them so in 
unison with the people and the times, and with a career of 
conquest, of itself out of the bounds of common probability, 
that he has been induced to leave them in all their graphic 
force. 

Those who have read the life of Mahomet will find in the fol¬ 
lowing pages most of their old acquaintances again engaged, 
but in a vastly grander field of action; leading armies, sub- 



MAH0ME1 AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


223 

jugating empires, and dictating from the palaces and thrones 
of deposed potentates. 

In constructing his work, which is merely intended for pop¬ 
ular use, the author has adopted a form somewhat between 
biography and chronicle, admitting of personal anecdote, and 
a greater play of familiar traits and peculiarities than is con¬ 
sidered admissible in the stately walk of history. His igno 
ranee of the oriental languages has obliged him to take his 
materials at second hand, where he could have wished to read 
them in the original: such, for instance, has been the case with 
the accounts given by the Arabian writer, A1 Wakidi, of the 
conquest of Syria, and especially of the siege of Damascus, 
which retain much of their dramatic spirit even in the homely 
pages of Ockley. To this latter writer the author has been 
much indebted, as well as to the Abbe de Marigny’s History of 
the Arabians, and to D’Herbelot’s Bibliotheque Orientale. In 
fact his pages are often a mere digest of facts already before 
the public, but divested of cumbrous diction and uninteresting 
details. Some, however, are furnished from sources recently 
laid open, and not hitherto wrought into the regular web of 
history. 

In his account of the Persian conquest, the author has been 
much benefited by the perusal of the Gemaldesaal of the 
learned Hammer-Purgstall, and by a translation of the Per¬ 
sian historian Tabari, recently given to the public through the 
pages of the Journal of the American Oriental Society, by Mr. 
John P. Brown, dragoman of the United States legation at 
Constantinople. 

In the account of the Moslem conquests along the northern 
coast of Africa, of which so little is known, he has gleaned 
many of his facts from Conde’s Domination of the Arabs in 
Spain, and from the valuable work on the same subject, re¬ 
cently put forth under the sanction of the Oriental Translation 
Fund of Great Britain fcnd Ireland, by his estimable friend, 
Don Pascual de Gayangos, formerly Professor of Arabic in the 
Athenaeum of Madrid. 

The author might cite other sources whence he has derived 
scattered facts; but it appears to him that he has already said 
enough on this point, about a work written more through in¬ 
clination than ambition; and which, as before intimated, does 
not aspire to be consulted as authority, but merely to be read 
as a digest of current knowledge, adapted to popular use. 

SUNNYSIDE, 1850. 


224 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


CHAPTER I. 

ELECTION OF ABU BEKER, FIRST CALIPH, HEGIRA 11 , A.D. 632 . 

The death of Mahomet left his religion without a head and 
his people without a sovereign; there was danger, therefore, 
of the newly formed empire falling into confusion. All Me¬ 
dina, on the day of his death, was in a kind of tumult, and 
nothing but the precaution of Osama Ibn Zeid in planting the 
standard before the prophet’s door, and posting troops in 
various parts, prevented popular commotions. The question 
was, on wffiom to devolve the reins of government? Four 
names stood prominent as having claims of affinity: Abu 
Beker, Omar, Othman, and Ali. Abu Beker was the father of 
Ayesha, the favorite wife of Mahomet. Omar was father of 
Hafsa, another of his wives, and the one to whose care he had 
confided the coffer containing the revelations of the Koran. 
Othman had married successively two of his daughters, but 
they were dead, and also their progeny. Ali was cousin 
german of Mahomet and husband of Fatima, his only daugh¬ 
ter. Such were the ties of relationship to him of these four 
great captains. The right of succession, in order of consan 
guinity, lav with Ali; and his virtues and services eminently 
entitled him to it. On the first burst of his generous zeal, 
when Islamism was a derided and persecuted faith, he had 
been pronounced by Mahomet his brother, his vicegerent; he 
had ever since been devoted to him in word and deed, and had 
honored the cause by his magnanimity as signally as he had 
vindicated it by his valor. His friends, confiding in the jus¬ 
tice of his claims, gathered round him in the dwelling of his 
wife Fatima, to consult about means of putting him quietly in 
possession of the government. 

Other interests, however, were at work, operating upon the 
public mind. Abu Beker was held up, not merely as connected 
by marriage ties with the prophet, but as one of the first and 
most zealous of his disciples; as the voucher for the truth of his 
night journey; as his fellow-sufferer in persecution; as the one 
who accompanied him in his flight from Mecca; as his compam 
ion in the cave wnen they were miraculously saved from dis- 
covery; as his counsellor and co-operator in all his plans and 


MAHOMET AND LIS SHCCESSOMS. 


225 


undertakings; as the one in fact whom the prophet had plainly 
pointed out as his successor, by deputing him to officiate in his 
stead in the religious ceremonies during his last illness. His 
claims were strongly urged by his daughter Ayesha, who had 
great influence among the faithful; and who was stimulated 
not so much by zeal for her father, as by hatred of Ah, whom 
she had never forgiven for having inclined his ear to the 
charge of incontinence against her in the celebrated case 
entitled The False Accusation. 

Omar also had a powerful party among the populace, who 
admired him for his lion-like demeanor, his consummate mili¬ 
tary skill, his straightforward simplicity, and dauntless courage. 
He also had an active female partisan in his daughter Hafsa. 

While therefore Ali and his friends were in quiet counsel in 
the house of Fatima, many of the principal Moslems gathered 
together without their knowledge, to settle the question of 
succession. The two most important personages in this assem¬ 
blage were Abu Beker and Omar. The first measure was to 
declare the supreme power not hereditary but elective; a 
measure which at once destroyed the claims of Ah on the score 
of consanguinity, and left the matter open to the public choice. 
This has been ascribed to the jealousy of the Koreishites of the 
line of Abd Schems; who feared, should Ali’s claims be recog¬ 
nized, that the sovereign power, like the guardianship of the 
Caaba, might be perpetuated in the haughty line of Haschem. 
Some, however, pretend to detect in it the subtle and hostile 
influence of Ayesha. 

A dispute now arose between the Mohadjerins or refugees 
from Mecca and the Ansarians or Helpers of Medina, as to the 
claims of their respective cities in nominating a successor to 
Mahomet. The former founded the claims of Mecca on its 
being the birthplace of the prophet, and tlie first in which his 
doctrines had been divulged; they set forward their own claims 
also as his townsmen, his relatives, and the companions of his 
exile. The Ansarians, on the other hand, insisted on the 
superior claims of Medina, as having been the asylum of the 
prophet, and his chosen residence; and on their own claims as 
having supported him in his exile, and enabled him to with¬ 
stand and overcome his persecutors. 

The dispute soon grew furious, and scimctars flashed from 
their scabbards, when one of the people of Medina proposed as 
a compromise that each party should furnish a ruler and the 
government have two heads. Omar derided the proposition 


226 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


with scorn. “Two blades,” said he, “cannot go into one 
sheath.” Abu Beker also remonstrated against a measure cal¬ 
culated to weaken the empire in its very infancy. He con¬ 
jured the Moslems to remain under one head, and named 
Omar and Abu Obeidah as persons worthy of the office, and 
between whom they should choose. Abu Obeidah was one of 
the earliest disciples of Mahomet; he had accompanied him in 
his flight from Mecca, and adhered to him in all his fortunes. 

The counsel of Abu Beker calmed for a time the turbulence 
of the assembly, but it soon revived with redoubled violence. 
Upon this Omar suddenly rose, advanced to Abu Beker, and 
hailed him as the oldest, best, and most thoroughly-tried of the 
adherents of the prophet, and the one most worthy to succeed 
him. So saying, he kissed his hand in token of allegiance, and 
swore to obey him as his sovereign. 

This sacrifice of his own claims in favor of a ?ival struck the 
assembly with surprise, and opened their eyes to the real merits 
of Abu Beker. They beheld in him the faithful companion 
of the prophet, who had always been by his side. They knew 
his wisdom and moderation, and venerated his gray hairs. It 
appeared but reasonable that the man whose counsels had con¬ 
tributed to establish the government, should be chosen to carry 
it on. The example of Omar, therefore, was promptly followed, 
and Abu Beker was hailed as chief. 

Omar now ascended the pulpit. “ Henceforth,” said he, “if 
any one shall presume to take upon himself the sovereign 
power without the public voice, let him suffer death; as well as 
all who may nominate or uphold him.” This measure was 
instantly adopted, and thus a bar was put to the attempts of 
any other candidate. 

The whole policy of Omar in these measures, which at first 
sight appears magnanimous, has been cavilled at as crafty and 
selfish. Abu Beker, it is observed, was well stricken in years, 
being about the same age with the prophet; it was not prob¬ 
able he would long survive. Omar trusted, therefore, to 
succeed in a little while to the command. His last measure 
struck at once at the hopes of Ali, his most formidable compet¬ 
itor; who, shut up with his friends in the dwelling of Fatima, 
knew nothing of the meeting in which his pretensions were 
thus demolished. Craft, however, we must observe, was not 
one of Omar’s characteristics, and was totally opposed to the 
prompt, stern, and simple course of his conduct on all occa¬ 
sions ; nor did he ever show any craving lust for power. He 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 997 

seems ever to have been a zealot in the cause of Islam, and to 
have taken no indirect measures to promote it. 

His next movement was indicative of his straightforward 
cut-and-thrust policy. Abu Beker, wary and managing, feared 
there might be some outbreak on the part of Ali and his friends 
when they should hear of the election which had taken place. 
He requested Omar, therefore, to proceed with an armed band 
to the mansion of Fatima, and maintain tranquillity in that 
quarter. Omar surrounded the house with his followers; an¬ 
nounced to Ali the election of Abu Beker, and demanded his 
concurrence. Ali attempted to remonstrate, alleging his own 
claims; but Omar proclaimed the penalty of death decreed to 
all who should attempt to usurp the sovereign power in defi¬ 
ance of public will, and threatened to enforce it by setting fire 
to the house and consuming its inmates. 

“Oh son of Khattab!” cried Fatima reproachfully, “thou 
wilt not surely commit such an outrage!” 

“Ay will I in very truth!” replied Omar, “unless ye all 
make common cause with the people.”. 

The friends of Ali were fain to yield, arid to acknowledge the 
sovereignty of Abu Beker. Ali, however, held himself apart 
in proud and indignant reserve until the death of Fatima, 
which happened in the course of several months. He then 
paid tardy homage to Abu Beker, but, in so doing, upbraided 
him with want of openness and good faith in managing the 
election without his privity; a reproach which the reader will 
probably think not altogether unmerited. Abu Beker, how¬ 
ever, disavowed all intrigue, and declared he had accepted the 
sovereignty merely to allay the popular commotion; and was 
ready to lay it down whenever a more worthy candidate could 
be found who would unite the wishes of the people. 

Ali was seemingly pacified by this explanation; but he 
spurned it in his heart, and retired in disgust into the interior 
1 of Arabia, taking with him his two sons Hassan and Hosein, the 
only descendants of the prophet. From these have sprung a 
numerous progeny, who to this day are considered noble, and 
wear green turbans as the outward sign of their illustrious 
lineage. 


- 228 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER II. 

MODERATION OF ABU BEKER—TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER—REBEL¬ 
LION OF ARAB TRIBES—DEFEAT AND DEATH OF MALEC IBN 
NOWIRAH — HARSH MEASURES OF KHALED CONDEMNED BY 
OMAR, BUT EXCUSED BY ABU BEKER—KHALED DEFEATS MO 
SEiLMA THE FALSE PROPHET—COMPILATION OF THE KORAN. 

On assuming the supreme authority, Abu Beker refused to 
take the title of king or prince; several of the Moslems hailed 
him as God’s vicar on earth, but he rejected the appellation; 
he was not the vicar of God, he said, but of his prophet, whose 
plans and wishes it was his duty to carry out and fulfil. ‘ ‘ In 
so doing, ” added he, ‘ ‘ I will endeavor to avoid all prejudice 
and partiality. Obey me only so far as I obey God and the 
‘prophet. If I go beyond these bounds, I have no authority 
over you. If I err, set me right; I shall be open to convic¬ 
tion.” 

He contented himself, therefore, with the modest title of 
Caliph, that is to say, successor, by which the Arab sovereigns 
have ever since been designated. They have not all, however, 
imitated the modesty of Abu Beker, in calling themselves suc¬ 
cessors of the prophet; but many, in after times, arrogated to 
themselves the title of Caliphs and Vicars of God, and his 
Shadow upon Earth. The supreme authority, as when exer¬ 
cised by Mahomet, united the civil and religious functions: 
the Caliph was sovereign and pontiff. 

It may be well to observe, that the original name of the 
newly elected Caliph was Abdallah Athek Ibn Abu Kaliafa. 
He was also, as we have shown, termed A1 Seddek, or The 
Testifier to the Truth; from having maintained the verity of 
Mahomet’s nocturnal journey; but he is always named in 
Moslem histories, Abu Beker; that is to say, The Father of 
the Virgin; his daughter Ayesha being the only one of the 
prophet’s wives that came a virgin to his arms, the others 
having previously been in wedlock. 

At the time of his election Abu Beker was about sixty-two 
years of age; tall, and well formed, though spare; with a florid 
complexion and thin beard, which would have been gray, but 
that he tinged it after the oriental usage. He was a man of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


239 

great judgment and discretion, whose wariness and manage¬ 
ment at times almost amounted to craft; yet his purposes 
appear to have been honest and unselfish; directed to the good 
of the cause, not to his own benefit. In the administration of 
his office he betrayed nothing of sordid worldliness. Indiffer¬ 
ent to riches, and to all pomps, luxuries, and sensual indulg¬ 
ences, he accepted no pay for his services but a mere pittance, 
sufficient to maintain an Arab establishment of the simplest 
kind, in which all his retinue consisted of a camel and a black 
slave. The surplus funds accruing to his treasury he dispensed 
every Friday; part to the meritorious, the rest to the poor; 
and was ever ready, from his own private means, to help the 
distressed. On entering office he caused his daughter Ayesha 
to take a strict account of his private patrimony, to stand as 
a record against him should he enrich himself while in office. 

Notwithstanding all his merits, however, his advent to power 
was attended by public commotions. Many of the Arabian 
tribes had been converted by the sword, and it needed the com¬ 
bined terrors of a conqueror and a prophet to maintain them 
in allegiance to the faith. On the death of Mahomet, there¬ 
fore. they spurned at the authority of his successor, and re¬ 
fused to pay the Zacat, or religious contributions of tribute, 
tithes, and alms. The signal of revolt flew from tribe to tribe, 
until the Islam empire suddenly shrank to the cities of Mecca, 
Medina, and Tayef. 

A strong body of the rebels even took the field and advanced 
upon Medina. They were led on by a powerful and popular 
Sheikh named Malec Ibn Nowirah. He was a man of high 
birth and great valor, an excellent horseman, and a distin¬ 
guished poet; all great claims on Arab admiration. To these 
may be added the enviable fortune of having for wife the most 
beautiful woman in all Arabia. 

Hearing of the approach of this warrior poet and his army, 
Abu Beker hastened to fortify the city, sending the women and 
children, the aged and infirm, to the rocks and caverns of the 
neighboring mountains. 

But though Mahomet was dead, the sword of Islam was not 
buried with him; and Khaled Ibn Waled now stood forward 
to sustain the fame acquired by former acts of prowess. He 
was sent out against the rebels at the head of a hasty levy of 
four thousand five hundred men and eleven banners. The 
wary Abu Beker, with whom discretion kept an equal pace 
with valor, had a high opinion of the character and talents of 


230 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the rebel chief, and hoped, notwithstanding his defection, to 
conquer him by kindness. Khaied was instructed, therefore, 
should Malec fall into his power, to treat him with great re¬ 
spect; to be lenient to the vanquished, and to endeavor, by 
gentle means, to win all back to the standard of Islam. 

Khaied, however, was a downright soldier, who had no liking 
for gentle means. Having overcome the rebels in a pitched 
battle, he overran their country, giving his soldiery permission 
to seize upon the flocks and herds of the vanquished, and make 
slaves of their children. 

Among the prisoners brought into his presence were Malec 
and his beautiful wife. The beauty of the latter dazzled the 
eyes even of the rough soldier, but probably hardened his 
heart against her husband. 

“Why,” demanded he of Malec, “do you refuse to pay the 
Zacat S” 

“Because I can pray to God without paying these exactions,” 
was the reply. 

“ Prayer, without aims, is of no avail,” said Khaied. 

“Does your master say so ?” demanded Malec haughtily. 

“My master!” echoed'Khaied, “and is he not thy master 
likewise ? By Allah, I have a mind to strike off thy head!” 

“ Are these also the orders of your master ?” rejoined Malec 
with a sneer. 

“ Again!” cried Khaied, in a fury; “smite off the head of this 
rebel.” 

His officers interfered, for all respected the prisoner; but the 
rage of Khaied was not to be appeased. 

“The beauty of this woman kills me,” said Malec, signifi¬ 
cantly, pointing to his wife. 

“Nay!” cried Khaied, “it is Allah who kills thee because of 
thine apostasy.” 

“I am no apostate,” said Malec; “I profess the true faith—” 

It was too late; the signal of death had already been given. 
Scarce had the declaration of faith passed the lips of the un¬ 
fortunate Malec, when his head fell beneath the scimetar of 
Derar Ibn al Azwar, a rough soldier after Khaled’s own heart. 

This summary execution, to which the beauty of a woman 
was alleged as the main excitement, gave deep concern to Abu 
Beker, who remarked, that the prophet had pardoned even 
Wacksa, the Ethiop, the slayer of his uncle Hamza, w r hen the 
culprit made profession of the faith. As to Omar, he declared 
that Khaied, according to the laws of the Koran, ought to be 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


231 


stoned to death for adultery, or executed for the murder of a 
Moslem. The politic Abu Beker, however, observed that 
Khaled had sinned through error rather than intention. “Shall 
I,” added he, “sheathe the sword of God? The sword which 
he himself has drawn against the unbelieving ?” 

So far from sheathing the sword, we find it shortly afterward 
employed in an important service. This was against the false 
prophet Moseilma, who, encouraged by the impunity with 
which, during the illness of Mahomet, he had been suffered to 
propagate his doctrines, had increased greatly the number of 
his proselytes and adherents, and held a kind of regal and 
sacerdotal sway over the important city and fertile province of 
Yamama, between the Bed Sea and the Gulf of Persia. 

There is quite a flavor of romance in the story of this impos¬ 
tor. Among those dazzled by his celebrity and charmed by his 
rhapsodical effusions, was Sedjah, wife of Abu Cahdla, a poet¬ 
ess of the tribe of Tamirn, distinguished among the Arabs for 
her personal and mental charms. She came to see Moseilma 
in like manner as the Queen of Sheba came to witness the wis¬ 
dom and grandeur of King Solomon. They were inspired with 
a mutual passion at the first interview, and passed much of 
their time together in tender, if not religious intercourse. Sed¬ 
jah became a convert to the faith of her lover, and caught 
from him the imaginary gift of prophecy. He appears to have 
caught, in exchange, the gift of poetry, for certain amatory 
effusions, addressed by him to his beautiful visitant, are still 
preserved by an Arabian historian, and breathe all the warmth 
of the Song of Solomon. 

This dream of poetry and prophecy was interrupted by the 
approach of Khaled at the head of a numerous army. Mose- 
ilma sallied forth to meet him with a still greater force. A 
battle took place at Akreba, not far from the capital city of 
Yamama. At the onset the rebels had a transient success, and 
twelve hundred Moslems bit the dust. Khaled, however, rallied 
his forces; the enemy were overthrown, and ten thousand cut 
to pieces. ’ Moseilma fought with desperation, but fell covered 
with wounds. It is said his death-blow was given by Wacksa, 
the Ethiopian, the same who had killed Hamza, uncle of Ma¬ 
homet, in the battle of Oliod, and that he used the self-same 
spear. ’ Wacksa, since his pardon by Mahomet, had become a 
zealous Moslem. 

The surviving disciples of Moseilma became promptly com 
verted to Islamism under the pious but heavy hand of Khaled, 


232 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


whose late offence in the savage execution of Malec was com¬ 
pletely atoned for by his victory over the false prophet. He 
added other services of the same military kind in this critical 
juncture of public affairs; reinforcing and co-operating with 
certain commanders who had been sent in different directions 
to suppress rebellions; and it was chiefly through his prompt 
and energetic activity that, before the expiration of the first 
year of the Caliphat, order was restored, and the empire of 
Islam re-established in Arabia. 

It was shortly after the victory of Khaled over Mose’flma 
that Abu Beker undertook to gather together, from written 
and oral sources, the precepts and revelations of the Koran, 
which hitherto had existed partly in scattered documents, and 
partly in the memories of the disciples and companions of the 
prophet. He was greatly urged to this undertaking by Omar, 
that ardent zealot for the faith. The latter had observed with 
alarm the number of veteran companions of the prophet who 
had fallen in the battle of Akreba. “ In a little while, ” said he, 
“all the living testifiers to the faith, who bear the revelations 
of it in their memories, will have passed away, and with them 
so many records of the doctrines of Islam.” He urged Abu 
Beker, therefore, to collect from the surviving disciples all that 
they remembered; and to gather together from all quarters 
whatever parts of the Koran existed in writing. The manner 
in which Abu Beker proceeded to execute this pious task has 
been noticed in the preceding volume; it was not, however, 
completed until under a succeeding Caliph. 


CHAPTER III. 

CAMPAIGN AGAINST SYRIA—ARMY SENT UNDER YE ZED IBN ABU 
SOFIAN — SUCCESSES — ANOTHER ARMY UNDER AMRU IBN AL 
AASS—BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENTS OF KHALED IN IRAK. 

The febel tribes of Arabia being once more brought into 
allegiance, and tranquillity established at home, Abu Beker 
turned his thoughts to execute the injunction of the prophet, 
to propagate the faith throughout the world, until all nations 
should be converted to Islamism, by persuasion or the sword. 
The moment was auspicious for such a gigantic task. The 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


233 


long and desolating wars between the Persian and Byzantine 
emperors, though now at an end, had exhausted those once 
mighty powers, and left their frontiers open to aggression. In 
the second year of his reign, therefore, Abu Beker prepared to 
carry out the great enterprise contemplated by Mahomet in hi# 
latter days—the conquest of Syria. 

Under this general name, it should be observed, were com¬ 
prehended the countries lying between the Euphrates and the 
Mediterranean, including Phoenicia and Palestine.* These 
countries, once forming a system of petty states and king¬ 
doms, each with its own government and monarch, were now 
merged into the great Byzantine Empire, and acknowledged 
the sway of the emperor Heraclius at Constantinople. 

Syria had long been a land of promise to the Arabs. They 
had known it for ages by the intercourse of the caravans, and 
had drawn from it their chief supplies of corn. It was a land 
of abundance. Part of it was devoted to agriculture and hus¬ 
bandry, covered with fields of grain, with vineyards and trees 
producing the finest fruits; with pastures well stocked with 
flocks and herds. On the Arabian borders it had cities, the 
rich marts of internal trade; while its seaports, though de¬ 
clined from the ancient splendor and pre-eminence of Tyre and 
Sidon, still were the staples of an opulent and widely extended 
commerce. 

In the twelfth year of the Hegira, the following summons 
was sent by Abu Beker to the chiefs of Araoia Petrea and 
Arabia Felix. 

“In the name of the Most Merciful God! Abdallah Athek 
Ibn Abu Kahafa to all true believers, health, happiness, and 
the blessing of God. Praise be to God, and to Mahomet his 
prophet! This is to inform you that I intend to send an army 
of the faithful into Syria, to deliver that country from the in¬ 
fidels, and I remind you that to fight for the true faith is to 
obey God J” 

■ There needed no further inducement to bring to his standard 
every Arab that owned a horse or a camel, or could wield a 
lance. Every day brought some Sheikh to Medina at the head 
of the fighting men of his tribe, and before long the fields 
round the city were studded with encampments. The com- 


* Syria, in if? widest oriental acceptation, included likewise Mesopotamia, Chal* 
dea and even Assyria, the whole forming what in Scriptural geography was denom* 
inated Aram, 



234 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


mand of the army was given to Yezed Ibn Abu Sofian. The 
troops soon became impatient to strike their sunburnt tents 
and march. “Why do we loiter?” cried they; “ail our fight¬ 
ing men are here; there are none more to come. The plains of 
Medina are parched and bare, there is no food for man or 
steed. Give us the word, and let us march for the fruitful 
land of Syria.” 

Abu Beker assented to their wishes. From the brow of a 
hill he reviewed the army on the point of departure. The 
heart of the Caliph swelled with pious exultation as he looked 
down upon the stirring multitude, the glittering array of arms, 
the squadrons of horsemen, the lengthening line of camels, and 
called to mind the scanty handful that used to gather round 
the standard of the prophet. Scarce ten years had elapsed 
since the latter had been driven a fugitive from Mecca, and 
now a mighty host assembled at the summons of his successor, 
and distant empires were threatened by the sword of Islam. 
Filled with these thoughts, he lifted up his voice and prayed 
to God to make these troops valiant and victorious. Then 
giving the word to march, the tents were struck, the camels 
laden, and in a little while the army poured in a long con- 
tinuous train over hill and valley. 

Abu Beker accompanied them on foot on the first day’s 
march. The leaders would have dismounted and yielded him 
their steeds. “Nay,” said he, “ride on. You are in the ser¬ 
vice of Allah. As for me, I shall be rewarded for every step I 
take in his cause.” 

His parting charge to Yezed, the commander of the army, 
was a singular mixture of severity and mercy. 

“Treat your soldiers with kindness and consideration; be 
just in all your dealings with them, and consult their feelings 
and opinions. Fight valiantly, and never turn your back 
upon a foe. When victorious, harm not the aged, and protect 
women and children. Destroy not the palm-tree nor fruit- 
trees of any kind; waste not the cornfield with fire; nor kill 
any cattle excepting for food. Stand faithfully to every cove¬ 
nant and promise; respect all religious persons who live in 
hermitages, or convents, and spare their edifices. But should 
you meet with a class of unbelievers of a different kind, who 
go about with shaven crowns, and belong to the synagogue of 
Satan, be sure you cleave their skulls unless they embrace the 
true faith, or render tribute.” 

Having received this summary charge, Yezed continued his 


MAHOMET AND FTS SUCCESSORS. 


235 


march toward Syria, and the pious Caliph returned to Medina. 
The prayers which the latter had put up for the success of 
the army appeared to be successful. Before long a great 
cavalgada of horses, mules, and camels laden with booty 
poured into the gates of Medina. Yezed had encountered, on 
the confines of Syria, a body of troops detached by the em¬ 
peror Heraclius to observe him, and had defeated them, kill 
ing the general and twelve hundred men. He had been equally 
successful in various subsequent skirmishes. All the booty 
gained in these actions had been sent to the Caliph, as an 
offering by the army of the first fruits of the harvest of Syria. 

Abu Beker sent tidings of this success to Mecca and the sur¬ 
rounding country, calling upon all true believers to press for¬ 
ward in the career of victory, thus prosperously commenced. 
Another army was soon set on foot, the command of which 
was given to Seid Ibn Khaled. This appointment, however, 
not being satisfactory to Omar, whose opinions and wishes 
had vast weight at Medina, Ayesha prevailed on her father to 
invite Seid to resign, and to appoint in his place Aniru Ibn al 
Aass; the same who in the early days of the faith ridiculed 
Mahomet and his doctrines in satirical verses, but who, since 
his conversion to Islamism, had risen to eminence in its ser¬ 
vice, and was one of its most valiant and efficient champions. 

Such was the zeal of the Moslems in the prosecution of this 
holy war, that Seid Ibn Khaled cheerfully resigned his com¬ 
mand and enlisted under the standard which he had lately 
reared. 

At the departure of the army, Abu Beker, who was excellent 
at counsel, and fond of bestowing it, gave Amru a code of con¬ 
duct for his government, admonishing him to live righteously, 
as a dying man in the presence of God, and accountable for all 
things in a future state. That he should not trouble himself 
about the private concerns of others, and should forbid his men 
all religious disputes about events and doctrines of the “ times 
of ignorance;” that is to say, the times antecedent to Mahomet; 
but should enforce the diligent reading of the Koran, which 
contained all that was necessary for them to know. 

As there would now be large bodies of troops in Syria, and 
various able commanders, Abu Beker in maturing the plan of 
his campaign assigned them different points of action. Amru 
was to draw towards Palestine; Abu Obeidah to undertake 
Emessa; Seid Ibn Abu Sofian, Damascus; and Serhil Ibn 
Hasan, the country about the Jordan. They were all to act as 


T 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


236 

much as possible in concert, and to aid each other in case ol 
need. When together they were all to be under the orders of 
Abu Obeidah, to whom was given the general command in 
Syria. This veteran disciple of the prophet stood high, as we 
have shown, in the esteem and confidence of Abu Beker, having 
been one of the two whom he had named as worthy of the 
Calipliat. He was now about fifty years of age; zealously de¬ 
voted to the cause, yet one with whom the sword of faith was 
sheathed in meekness and humanity; perhaps the cautious 
Abu Beker thought his moderation would be a salutary check 
to the headlong valor of the fanatical soldiers of Islam. 

While this grand campaign was put in' operation against the 
Roman possessions in Syria, a minor force was sent to invade 
Irak. This province, which included the ancient Chaldea and 
the Babylonia of Ptolemy, was bounded on the east by Susiana 
or Khurzestan and the mountains of Assyria and Medea, on 
the north by part of Mesopotamia, on the west and south by 
the Deserts of Sham or Syria and by a part of Arabia Deserta. 
It was a region tributary to the Persian monarch, and so far a 
part of his dominions. The campaign in this quarter was con¬ 
fided to Khaled, of whose prowess Abu Beker had an exalted 
opinion, and who was at this time at the head of a moderate 
force in one of the rebellious provinces which he had brought 
into subjection. The Caliph’s letter to him was to the follow¬ 
ing effect. “Turn thee toward Arabian Irak! The conquest 
of Hira and Cufa is intrusted to thee. After the subjection of 
those lands, turn thee against Aila and subdue it with God’s 
help!” 

Hira was a kingdom to the west of Babylonia, on the verge 
of the Syrian Desert; it had been founded by a race of Arabs, 
descendants of Kahtan, and had subsisted upward of six hun¬ 
dred years; the greater part of the time it had been under a 
line of princes of the house of Mondar; who acknowledged 
allegiance to the kings of Persia and acted as their lieutenants 
over the Arabs of Irak. 

During the early part of the third century many Jacobite 
Christians had been driven by the persecutions and disorders 
of the Eastern Church to take refuge among the Arabs of Hira. 
Their numbers had been augmented in subsequent times by 
fugitives from various quarters, until, shortly before the birth 
of Mahomet, the king of Hira and all his subjects had embraced 
Christianity. 

Much was said of the splendor of the capital, which bore the 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCOESSOHS. 


237 


same name with the kingdom, Here were two palaces of ex¬ 
traordinary magnificence, the beauty of one of which, if Ara¬ 
bian legends speak true, was fatal to the architect; for the 
king, fearing that he might build one still more beautiful for 
some other monarch, had -him thrown headlong from the 
tower. 

Khaled acted with his usual energy and success in the in¬ 
vasion of this kingdom. With ten thousand men he besieged 
the city of Hira; stormed its palaces; slew the king in battle; 
subdued the kingdom; imposed on it an annual tribute of 
seventy thousand pieces of gold, the first tribute ever levied by 
Moslems on a foreign land, and sent the same with the son of 
the deceased king to Medina. 

He next carried his triumphant arms against Aila, defeated 
Hormuz, the Persian governor, and sent his crown, with a fifth 
part of the booty, to the Caliph. The crown was of great 
value, being one of the first class of those worn by the seven 
vicegerents of the Persian ‘ ‘ King of Kings. ” Among the 
trophies of victory sent to Medina was an elephant. Three 
other Persian generals and governors made several attempts, 
with powerful armies, to check the victorious career of Khaled, 
but were alike defeated. City after city fell into his hands; 
nothing seemed capable of withstanding his arms. Planting 
his victorious standard on the bank of the Euphrates, he wrote 
to the Persian monarch, calling upon him to embrace the faith 
or pay tribute. “ If you refuse both,” added he, “ I will come 
upon you with a host who love death as much as you do life.” 

The repeated convoys of booty sent by Khaled to Medina 
after his several victories, the sight of captured crowns and 
captured princes, and of the first tribute imposed on foreign 
lands, had excited the public exultation to an uncommon degree. 
Abu Beker especially took pride in his achievements; con¬ 
sidering them proofs of his own sagacity and foresight, which 
he had shown in refusing to punish him with death when 
strongly urged to do so by Omar. As victory after victory was 
announced, and train after train laden with spoils crowded the 
gates of Medina, he joyed to see his anticipations so far out¬ 
stripped by the deeds of this headlong warrior. “ By Allah,” 
exclaimed he, in an ecstasy, “womankind is too weak to give 
birth to another Khaled.” 


. 238 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS 


CHAPTER IV. 

XNCOMPETENCY OF ABU OBEIDAH TO THE GENERAL COMMAND IN 
SYRIA—KHALED SENT TO SUIERSEDE HIM—PERIL OF THE MOS¬ 
LEM ARMY BEFORE BOSRA—TIMELY ARRIVAL OF KHALED—HIS 
EXPLOITS DURING THE SIEGE—CAPTURE OF BOSRA. 

The exultation of the Caliph over the triumphs in Irak was 
checked by tidings of a different tone from the army in Syria. 
Abu Obeidah, who had the general command, wanted the 
boldness and enterprise requisite to an invading general. A 
partial defeat of some of his troops discouraged him, and he 
heard with disquiet of vast hosts which the emperor Heraclius 
was assembling to overwhelm him. His letters to the Caliph 
partook of the anxiety and perplexity of his mind. Abu Beker, 
whose generally sober mind was dazzled at the time by the 
daring exploits of Khaled, was annoyed at finding that, while 
the latter was dashing forward in a brilliant career of conquest 
in Irak, Abu Obeidah was merely standing on the defensive in 
Syria. In the vexation of the moment he regretted that he had 
intrusted the invasion of the latter country to one who appeared 
to him a nerveless man; and he forthwith sent missives to 
Khaled ordering him to leave the prosecution of the war in 
Irak to his subordinate generals, and repair, in all haste, to 
aid the armies in Syria, and take the general command there. 
Khaled obeyed the orders with his usual promptness. Leaving 
his army under the charge of Mosenna Ibn Haris, he put him¬ 
self at the head of fifteen hundred horse, and spurred over the 
Syrian borders to join the Moslem host, which he learned, 
while on the way, was drawing toward the Christian city of 
Bosra. 

This city, the reader will recollect, was the great mart on 
the Syrian frontier, annually visited by the caravans, and 
where Mahomet, when a youth, had his first interview with 
Sergius, the Nestorian monk, from whom he was said to have 
received instructions in the Christian faith. It was a place 
usually filled with merchandise, and held out a promise of 
great booty; but it was strongly walled, its inhabitants were 
inured to arms, and it could at any time pour forth twelve 
thousand horse. Its very name, in the Syrian tongue, signi- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


239 


fied a tower of safety. Against this place Abu Obeidah had 
sent Serjabil Ibn Hasanah, a veteran secretary of Mahomet, 
with a troop of ten thousand horse. On his approach, Ro- 
manus, the governor of the city, notwithstanding the strength 
of the place and of the garrison, would fain have paid tribute, 
for he was dismayed by the accounts he had received of the 
fanatic zeal and irresistible valor of the Moslems, but his peo¬ 
ple were stout of heart, and insisted on fighting. 

The venerable Serjabil, as he drew near to the city, called 
upon Allah to grant the victory promised in his name by his 
apostle; and to establish the truth of his unity by confounding 
its opposers. His prayers apparently were of no avail. Squad¬ 
ron after squadron of horsemen wheeled down from the gates 
of Bosra, attacked the Moslems on every side, threw them into 
confusion, and made great slaughter. Overwhelmed by num¬ 
bers, Serjabil was about to order a retreat, when a great cloud 
of dust gave notice of another army at hand. 

There was a momentary pause on both sides, but the shout 
of Allah Achbar! Allah Achbar! resounded through the Moslem 
host, as the eagle banner of Khaled was descried through the 
cloud. That warrior came galloping to the field, at the hsad 
of his troop of horsemen, all covered with dust. Charging the 
foe with his characteristic impetuosity, he drove them back to 
the city, and planted his standard before the walls. 

The battle over, Serjabil would have embraced his deliverer, 
who was likewise his ancient friend, but Khaled regarded him 
reproachfully. “ What madness possessed thee,’’ said he, “ to 
attack with thy handful of horsemen a fortress girt with stone 
walls and thronged with soldiers?” 

“I acted,” said Serjabil, “not for myself, but at the com¬ 
mand of Abu Obeidah.” 

“ Abu Obeihah,” replied Khaled, bluntly, “ is a very worthy 
man, but he knows little of warfare. ” 

In effect the army of Syria soon found the difference between 
the commanders. The soldiers of Khaled, fatigued with a hard 
march, and harder combat, snatched a hasty repast, and 
throwing themselves upon the ground, were soon asleep. Kha¬ 
led alone took no rest; but, mounting a fresh horse, prowled 
all night round the city and the camp, fearing some new ir¬ 
ruption from the foe. 

At daybreak he roused his army for the morning prayer. 
Some of the troops performed their ablutions with water, others 
with sand. Khaled put up the matin prayer; then every man 


240 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


grasped his weapon and sprang to horse, for the gates of Bosra 
were already pouring forth their legions. The eyes of Khaled 
kindled as he saw them prancing down into the plain and glit¬ 
tering in the rising sun. “ These infidels,” said he, “think us 
weary and wayworn, but they will be confounded. Forward 
to the fight, for the blessing of Allah is with us!” 

As the armies approached each other, Romanus rode in ad¬ 
vance of his troops and defied the Moslem chief to single com- 
bot. Khaled advanced on the instant. Romanus, however, 
instead of levelling his lance, entered into a parley in an un¬ 
dertone of voice. . He declared that he was a Mahometan at 
heart, and had incurred great odium among the people of the 
place, by endeavoring to persuade them to pay tribute. He 
now offered to embrace Islamism, and to return and do his best 
to yield the city into the hands of the Moslems, on condition 
of security for life, liberty, and property. 

Khaled readily consented to the condition, but suggested 
that they should exchange a few dry blows, to enable Romanus 
to return to the city with a better grace, and prevent a sus¬ 
picion of collusion. Romanus agreed to the proposal, but with 
no great relish, for he was an arrant craven. He would fain 
have made a mere feint and flourish of weapons; but Khaled 
had a heavy hand and a kindling spirit, and dealt such hearty 
blows that he would have severed the other in twain, or cloven 
him to the saddle, had he struck with the edge instead of the 
flat of the sword. 

“Softly, softly,” cried Romanus. “Is this what you call 
sham fighting; or do you mean to slay me?” 

“By no means,” replied Khaled, “but we must lay on our 
blows a little roughly, to appear in earnest.” 

Romanus, battered and bruised, and wounded in several 
places, was glad to get back to his army with his life. He now 
extolled the prowess of Khaled, and advised the citizens to ne¬ 
gotiate a surrender; but they upbraided him with his coward¬ 
ice, stripped him of his command, and made him a prisoner 
in his own house; substituting in his place the general who had 
come to them with reinforcements from the emperor Herac- 
clius. 

The new governor, as his first essay in command, sallied in 
advance of the army, and defied Khaled to combat. Abda'lrah- 
man, son of the Caliph, a youth of great promise, begged of 
Khaled the honor of being his champion. His request being 
granted, he rode forth, well armed, to the encounter. The 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSOBS. 


241 


combat was of short duration. At the onset the governor was 
daunted by the fierce countenance of the youthful Moslem, and 
confounded by the address with which he managed his horse 
and wielded his lance. At the first wound he lost all presence 
of mind, and turning the reins endeavored to escape by dint of 
hoof. His steed was swiftest, and he succeeded in throwing 
himself into the midst of his forces. The impetuous youth 
spurred after him, cutting and slashing, right and left, and 
hewing his way with his scimetar. 

Khaled, delighted with his valor, but alarmed at his peril, 
gave the signal for a general charge. To the fight! to the 
fight! Paradise! Paradise! was the maddening cry. Horse 
was spurred against horse; man grappled man. The desperate 
conflict was witnessed from the walls, and spread dismay 
through the city. The bells rang alarums, the shrieks of women 
and children mingled with the prayers and chants of priests 
and monks moving in procession through the streets. 

The Moslems, too, called upon Allah for succor, mingling 
prayers and execrations as they fought. At length the troops 
of Bosra gave way: the squadrons that had sallied forth so 
gloriously in the morning were driven back in broken and 
headlong masses to the city; the gates were hastily swung to 
and barred after them; and, while they panted with fatigue 
and terror behind their bulwarks, the standards and banners 
of the cross were planted on the battlements, and couriers 
were sent off imploring reinforcements from the emperor. 

Night closed upon the scene of battle. The stifled groans of 
wounded warriors, mingled with the wailings of women, and 
the prayers of monks and friars, were heard in the once joyful 
streets of Bosra; while sentinels walked the rounds of the Arab 
camp to guard it against the desperation of the foe. 

Abda’lrahman commanded one of the patrols. Walking his 
round beneath the shadow of the city walls, he beheld a man 
come stealthily forth, the embroidery of whose garments, 
faintly glittering in the starlight, betrayed him to be a person 
of consequence. The lance of Abda’lrahman was at his breast, 
when he proclaimed himself to be Romanus, and demanded to 
be led to Khaled. On entering the tent of that leader he in¬ 
veighed against the treatment he had experienced from the 
people of Bosra, and invoked vengeance. They had confined 
him to his house, but it was built against the wall of the city. 
He had caused his sons and servants, therefore, to break a hole 
through it by which he had issued forth, and by which he 


242 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

offered to introduce a band of soldiers, who might throw open 
the city gates to the army. 

His offer was instantly accepted, and Abda’lrahman was in¬ 
trusted with the dangerous enterprise. He took with him a 
hundred picked men, and, conducted by Bomanus, entered in 
the dead of night, by the breach in the wall, into the house of 
the traitor. Here they were refreshed with food, and disguised 
to look like the soldiers of the garrison. Abda’lrahman then 
divided them into four bands of twenty-five men each, three 
of which he sent in different directions, with orders to keep 
quiet until he and his followers should give the signal shout of 
Allah Achbar! He then requested Bomanus to conduct him 
to the quarters of the governor, who had fled the fight with 
him that day. Under the guidance of the traitor he and his 
twenty-five men passed with noiseless steps through the streets. 
Most of the unfortunate people of Bosra had sunk to sleep; but 
now and then the groan of some wounded warrior, or the 
lament of some afflicted woman, broke the stillness of the 
night and startled the prowlers. 

Arrived at the gate of the citadel, they surprised the senti¬ 
nels, who mistook them for a friendly patrol, and made their 
way to the governor’s chamber. Bomanus entered first, and 
i ummoned the governor to receive a friend. 

“What friend seeks me at this hour of the night?” 

“ Thy friend Abda’lrahman,” cried Bomanus with malignant 
.riumph; “ who comes to send thee to hell!” 

The wretched poltroon would have fled. “Nay,” cried 
Abda’lrahman, “you escape me not a second time!” and with 
a blow of his scimetar laid him dead at his feet. He then gave 
the signal shout of Allah Achbar! It was repeated by his fol¬ 
lowers at the portal; echoed by the other parties in different 
quarters; the city gates were thrown open, the legions of 
Khaled and Serjabil rushed in, and the whole city resounded 
with the cries of Allah Achbar! The inhabitants, startled from 
their sleep, hastened forth to know the meaning of the uproar, 
but were cut down at their thresholds, and a horrible carnage 
took place until there was a general cry for quarter. Then, in 
compliance with one of the precepts of Mahomet, Khaled put a 
stop to the slaughter, and received the survivors under the 
yoke. 

The savage tumult being appeased, the unhappy inhabitants 
of Bosra inquired as to the mode in which they had been sur¬ 
prised. Khr.led hesitated ub expose the baseness of Bomanus; 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


243 


but the traitor gloried in his sname, and in the vengeance he 
had wreaked upon former friends. “ ’Twas I!” cried he, with 
demoniac exultation. * ‘ I renounce ye both in this world and 
the next. I deny him who was crucified;, and despise his 
worshippers. I choose Islam for my faith, the Caaba for my 
temple, the Moslems for my brethren, Mahomet for my 
prophet; and I bear witness that there is but one only Cod, 
who has no partner in his power and glory.” 

Having made this full recantation of his old faith and pro¬ 
fession of his new, in fulfilment of his traitorous compact, 
the apostate departed from Bosra, followed by the execrations 
of its inhabitants, among whom he durst no longer abide: and 
Khaled, although he despised him in his heart, appointed a 
guard to protect his property from plunder. 


CHAPTER V. 

KHALED LAYS SIEGE TO DAMASCUS. 

The capture of Bosra increased the ambition and daring of 
the Moslems, and Khaled now aspired to the conquest of Da¬ 
mascus. This renowned and beautiful city, one of the largest 
and most magnificent of the East, and reputed to be the oldest 
in the world, stood in a plain of wonderful richness and fer¬ 
tility, covered with groves and gardens, and bounded by an 
amphitheatre of hills, the skirts of Mount Lebanon. A river 
called by the ancients Chrysorrhoa, or the stream of gold, 
flows through this plain, feeding the canals and water-courses 
of its gardens, and the fountains of the city. 

The commerce of the place bespoke the luxuriance of the 
soil; dealing in wines, silks, wool, prunes, raisins, figs of un¬ 
rivalled flavor, sweet scented waters and perfumes. The fields 
were covered with odoriferous flowers, and the rose of Damas¬ 
cus has become famous throughout the world. This is one of 
the few, the very few, cities famous in ancient times, which 
still retain a trace of ancient delights. “The citron,” says a 
recent traveller, “perfumes the air for many miles round the 
city; and the fig-trees are of vast size. The pomegranate and 
orange grow in thickets. There is the trickling of water on 



244 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


every hand. Wherever you go there is a trotting brook, or a 
full and silent stream beside the track; and you have frequently 
to cross from one vivid green meadow to another by fording, 
or by little bridges. These streams are all from the river 
beloved by Naaman of old. He might well ask whether the 
Jordan was better tfean Pliarpar and Abana, the rivers of Da¬ 
mascus.” 

In this city too were invented those silken stuffs called dam¬ 
ask from the place of their origin, and those swords and scime- 
tars proverbial for their matchless temper. 

When Khaled resolved to strike for this great prize, he had 
but fifteen hundred horse, which had followed him from Irak, 
in addition to the force which he found with Serjabil; having, 
however, the general command of the troops in Syria, he wrote 
to Abu Obeidah to join him with his army, amounting to 
thirty-seven thousand men. 

The Moslems, accustomed to the aridity of the desert, gazed 
with wonder and delight upon the rich plain of Damascus. As 
they wound in lengthening files along the banks of the shining 
river, through verdant and flowery fields, or among groves 
and vineyards and blooming gardens, it seemed as if they were 
already realizing the paradise promised by the prophet to true 
believers; bub when the fanes and towers of Damascus rose to 
sight from among tufted bowers, they broke forth into shouts 
of transport. 

Heraclius the emperor was at Antioch, the capital of his 
Syrian dominions, when he heard of the advance of the Arabs 
upon the city of Damascus. He supposed the troops of Kha¬ 
led, however, to be a mere predatory band, intent as usual on 
hasty ravage, and easily repulsed when satisfied with plunder; 
and he felt little alarm for the safety of the city, knowing it 
to be very populous, strongly fortified, and well garrisoned. 
He contented himself, therefore, with dispatching a general 
named Caloiis with five thousand men to reinforce it. 

In passing through the country, Caloiis found the people 
flying to castles and other strongholds and putting them in a 
state of defence. As he approached Baalbec, the women came 
forth with dishevelled hair, wringing their hands and uttering 
cries of despair. “ Alas!” cried they, “ the Arabs overrun the 
land, and nothing can withstand them. Aracah and Sachnah, 
and Tadmor and Bosra, have fallen, and who shall protect 
Damascus!” 

Caloiis inquired the force of the invaders. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


245 

They knew but of the troops of Khaled, and answered, “Fif¬ 
teen hundred horse.” 

“ Be of good cheer,” said Caloiis; “in a few days I will re¬ 
turn with the head of Khaled on the point of this good spear.” 

He arrived at Damuscus before the Moslem army came in 
sight, and the same self-confidence marked his proceedings. 
Arrogating to himself the supreme command, he would have 
deposed and expelled the former governor Azrail, a meritori¬ 
ous old soldier, well beloved by the people. Violent dissen¬ 
sions immediately arose, and the city, instead of being pre¬ 
pared for defence, was a prey to internal strife. 

In the height of these tumults the army of Khaled, forty 
thousand strong, being augmented by that of Abu Obeidah, 
was descried marching across the plain. The sense of danger 
calmed the fury of contention, and the two governors sallied 
forth, with a great part of the garrison, to encounter the in¬ 
vaders. 

Both armies? drew up in battle array. Khaled was in front 
of the Moslem line, and with him was his brother in arms, 
Derar Ibn al Azwar. The latter was mounted on a fine Ara¬ 
bian mare, and poised a ponderous lance, looking a warrior 
at all points. Khaled regarded him with friendly pride, and 
resolved to give him an opportunity of distinguishing himself. 
For this purpose he detached him with a small squadron of 
horse to feel the pulse of the enemy. “ Now is the time, De¬ 
rar,” cried he, “ to show thyself a man, and emulate the deeds 
of thy father and other illustrious soldiers of the faith. For¬ 
ward in the righteous cause, and Allah will protect thee.” 

Derar levelled his lance, and at the head of his handful of 
followers charged into the thickest of the foe. In the first en¬ 
counter four horsemen fell beneath his arm; then wheeling 
off, and soaring as it were into the field to mark a different 
quarry, he charged with his little troop upon the foot soldiers, 
slew six with his own hand, trampled down others, and pro¬ 
duced great confusion. The Christians, however, recovered 
from a temporary panic, and opposed him with overwhelming 
numbers and Roman discipline. Derar saw the inequality of 
the fight, and having glutted his martial fury, showed the 
Arab dexterity at retreat, making his way back safely to the 
Moslem army, by whom he was received with acclama¬ 
tion. 

Abda’lrahman gave a similar proof of fiery courage; but his 
cavalry was received by a battalion of infantry arranged in 


246 


MAHOMET AND UIS SUCCESSORS. 


phalanx with extended spears, while stones and darts hurled 
from a distance galled both horse and rider. He also, after 
making a daring assault and sudden carnage, retired upon the 
spur and rejoined the army. 

Khaled now emulated the prowess of his friends, and career¬ 
ing in front of the enemy, launched a general defiance to single 
combat. 

The jealousies of the two Christian commanders continued 
in the field. Azrail, turning to Caloiis, taunted him to accept 
the challenge as a matter of course; seeing he was sent to pro¬ 
tect the country in this hour of danger. 

The vaunting of Caloiis was at an end. He had no inclina¬ 
tion for so close a fight with such an enemy, but pride would 
not permit him to refuse. He entered into the conflict with a 
faint heart, and in a short time would have retreated, but Kha¬ 
led wheeled between him and his army. He then fought with 
desperation, and the contest was furious on both sides, until 
Caloiis beheld his blood streaming down his armor. His heart 
failed him at the sight; his strength flagged; he fought 
merely on the defensive. Khaled perceiving this, suddenly 
closed with him, shifted his lance to his left hand, grasped 
Caloiis with the right, dragged him out of the saddle, and bore 
him off captive to the Moslem host, who rent the air with tri¬ 
umphant shouts. 

Mounting a fresh horse, Khaled prepared again for battle. 

‘‘Tarry, my friend,” cried Derar; ‘‘repose thyself for a 
time, and I will take thy place.” 

“Oh, Derar,” replied Khaled, “he who labors to-day shall 
rest to-morrow. There will be repose sufficient amid the de¬ 
lights of paradise!” 

When about to return to the field, Caloiis demanded a mo¬ 
ment’s audience, and making use of the traitor Eomanus as 
an interpreter, advised Khaled to bend all his efforts against 
Azrail, the former governor of the city, whose death he said 
would be the surest means of gaining the victory. Thus a 
spirit of envy induced him to sacrifice the good of his country 
to the desire of injuring a rival. 

Khaled was willing to take advice even from an enemy, 
especially when it fell in with his own humor; he advanced, 
therefore, in front, challenging Azrail loudly by name. The 
latter quickly appeared, well armed and mounted, and with 
undaunted bearing. 

The contest was long and obstinate. The combatants paused 


MAHOMI£T AND 1I1S SUCCESSORS. 247 

for breath. Klialed could not but regard his adversary with 
admiration. 

“Thy name,” said he, “is Azrail?” (This is the Arabic 
name for the angel of death.) 

“Azrail is my name,” replied the other. 

“By Allah!” replied Khaled, “thy namesake is at hand, 
waiting to carry thy soul to the fire of Jehennam!” 

They renewed the fight. Azrail, who was the most fleetly 
mounted, being sorely pressed, made use of an Arabian strata* 
gem, and giving the reins to his steed pretended to fly the 
field. Having distanced his adversary and fatigued his horse, 
he suddenly wheeled about and returned to the charge. Kha¬ 
led, however, was not to be outdone in stratagem. Throwing 
himself lightly from his saddle just as his antagonist came 
galloping upon him, he struck at the legs of his horse, brought 
him to the ground, and took his rider prisoner. 

The magnanimity of Khaled was not equal to his valor; or 
rather his fanatical zeal overcame all generous feelings. He 
admired Azrail as a soldier, but detested him as an infidel. 
Placing him beside his late rival Caloiis, he called upon both 
to renounce Christianity and embrace the faith of Islam. 
They persisted in a firm refusal, upon which he gave the sig¬ 
nal, and their heads were struck off and thrown over the walls 
into the city, a fearful warning to the inhabitants. 


CHAPTER VI. 

OF DAMASCUS CONTINUED—EXPLOITS OF DERAR—DEFEAT 
OF THE IMPERIAL ARMY. 

The siege of Damascus continued with increasing rigor. 
The inhabitants were embarrassed and dismayed by the loss of 
their two governors, and the garrison was thinned by frequent 
skirmishes, in which the bravest warriors were sure to fall. 
At length the soldiers ceased to sally forth, and the place 
became strictly invested. Khaled, with one half of the army, 
drew near to the walls on the east side, while Abu Obeidah, 
with the other half, was stationed on the west. The inhab' 
itants now attempted to corrupt Khaled, offering him a 
thousand ounces of gold and two hundred magnificent damask 



248 


MAHOMET AND UIS SUCCESSORS. 


robes to raise the siege. His reply was, that they must erne 
brace the Islam faith, pay tribute, or fight unto the death. 

While the Arabs lay thus encamped round the city, as if 
watching its expiring throes, they were surprised one day by 
the unusual soimd of shouts of joy within its walls. Sending 
out scouts, they soon learned the astounding intelligence that 
a great army was marching to the relief of the place. 

The besieged, in fact, in the height of their extremity, had 
lowered a messenger from the walls in the dead of the night, 
Rearing tidings to the emperor at Antioch of their perilous 
condition, and imploring prompt and efficient succor. Aware 
for the first time of the real magnitude of the danger, Herac- 
lius dispatched an army of a hundred thousand men to their 
relief, led on by Werdan, prefect of Emessa, an experienced 
general. 

Khaled would at once have marched to meet the foe, alleging 
that so great a host could come only in divisions, which might 
be defeated in detail; the cautious and quiet Abu Obeidah, 
however, counselled to continue the siege, and send some able 
officer with a detachment to check and divert the advancing 
army. His advice was adopted, and Derar, the cherished 
companion in arms of Khaled, was chosen for the purpose. 
That fiery Moslem was ready to march at once and attack the 
enemy with any handful of men that might be assigned him; 
but Khaled rebuked his inconsiderate zeal. “We are ex¬ 
pected,” said he, “ to fight for the faith, but not to throw our¬ 
selves away.” Allotting to his friend, therefore, one thousand 
chosen horsemen, he recommended to him to hang on the 
flanks of the enemy and impede their march. 

The fleetly mounted band of Derar soon came in sight of the 
van of Werdan’s army, slowly marching in heavy masses. 
They were for hovering about it and harassing it in the Arab 
manner, but the impetuous valor of Derar was inflamed, and 
he swore not to draw back a step without hard fighting. He 
was seconded by Rafi Ibn Omeirah, who reminded the troops 
that a handful of the faithful was sufficient to defeat an army 
of infidels. 

The battle cry was given. Derar, with some of his choicest 
troops, attacked the centre of the army, seeking to grapple 
with the general, whom he beheld there, surrounded by his 
guard. At the very onset he struck down the prefect’s right- 
hand man, and then his standard-bearer. Several of Derar’s 
followers sprang from their steeds to seize the standard, a 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


249 


cross richly adorned with precious stones, while he beat off the 
enemy who endeavored to regain it. The captured cross was 
borne off in triumph; but at the same moment Derar received 
a wound in the left arm from a javelin, launched by a son of 
Werdan. Turning upon the youth, he thrust his lance into 
his body, but, in withdrawing it, the iron head remained in 
the wound. Thus left, unarmed, he defended himself for a 
time with the mere truncheon of the lance, but was over¬ 
powered and taken prisoner. The Moslems fought furiously 
to rescue him, but in vain, and he was borne, captive from the 
field. They would now have fled, but were recalled by Rafi 
Ibn Omeirah. “Whoever flies,” cried he, “turns his back 
upon God and his prophet. Paradise is for those who fall in 
battle. If your captain be dead, God is living, and sees your 
actions.” 

They rallied and stood at bay. The fortune of the day was 
against them; they were attacked by tenfold their number, 
and though they fought with desperation, they-would soon 
have been cut to pieces, had not Khaled, at that critical 
moment, arrived at the scene of action with the greater part 
of his forces; a swift horseman having brought him tidings of 
this disastrous affray, and the capture of his friend. 

On arriving, he stopped not to parley, but charged into the 
thickest of the foe, where he saw most banners, hoping there 
to find his captive friend. Wherever he turned he h6wed a 
path before him, but Derar was not to be found. At length a 
prisoner told him that the captive had been sent off to Emessa 
under a strong escort. Khaled instantly dispatched Rafi Ibn 
Omeirah with a hundred horse in pursuit. They soon over¬ 
took the escort, attacked them furiously, slew several, and 
put the rest to flight, who left Derar, bound with cords, upon 
his charger. 

By the time that Rafi and Derar rejoined the Moslem army, 
Khaled had defeated the whole forces of Werdan, division 
after division, as they arrived successively at the field of 
action. In this manner a hundred thousand troops were 
defeated, in detail, by less than a third of their number, in¬ 
spired by fanatic valor, and led on by a skilful and intrepid 
chief. Thousands of the fugitives were killed in the pursuit; 
an immense booty in treasure, arms, baggage, and horses fell 
to the victors, and Khaled led back his army, flushed with 
conquest, but fatigued with fighting and burdened with spoils, 
to resume the siege of Damascus. 


250 


MAllOMET AND UTS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER VII. 

SIEGE OF DAMASCUS CONTINUED—SALLY OF THE GARRISON- 
HEROISM OF THE MOSLEM WOMEN. 

\ 

The tidings of the defeat of Werdan and his powerful army 
made the emperor Heraclius tremble in his palace at Antioch 
for the safety of his Syrian kingdom. Hastily levying another 
army of seventy thousand men, he put them under the com¬ 
mand of Werdan, at Aiznadan, with orders to hasten to the 
relief of Damascus, and attack the Arab army, which must be 
diminished and enfeebled by the recent battle. 

Khaled took counsel of Abu Obeidak how to avoid the im¬ 
pending storm. It was determined to raise the siege of Da¬ 
mascus, and seek the enemy promptly at Aiznadin. Conscious, 
however, of the inadequacy of his forces, Khaled sent missives 
to all the Moslem generals within his call. 

“In the name of the most merciful God! Khaled Ibn al 
Walid to Amru Ibn al Aass, Wealth and happiness. The Mos¬ 
lem brethren are about to march to Aiznadin to do battle with 
seventy thousand Greeks, who are coming to extinguish the 
light of God. But Allah will preserve his light in despite of 
all the infidels. Come to Aiznadin with thy troops; for, God, 
willing, thou shalt find me there.” These missives sent, he 
broke up his encampment before Damascus, and marched, 
with his whole force, towards Aiznadin. He would have 
placed Abu Obeidah at the head of the army; but the latter 
modestly remarked, that as Khaled was now commander-in¬ 
chief, that station appertained to him. Abu Obeidah, there¬ 
fore, brought up the rear, where were the baggage, the booty, 
the women, and the children. 

v When the garrison of Damascus saw their enemy on the 
march, they sallied forth under two brothers named Peter and 
Paul. The former led ten thousand infantry, the latter six 
thousand horse. Overtaking the rear of the Moslems, Paul 
with his cavalry charged into the midst of them, cutting down 
some, trampling others under foot, and spreading wide com 
fusion. Peter in the mean time, with his infantry, made a 
sweep of the camp equipage, the baggage, and the accumulated 
booty, and capturing most of the women, made off with his 
spoils towards Damascus. 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


251 


Tidings of this onset having reached Khaled in the van, he 
sent Derar, Abda’lrahman, and Rafi lbn Omeirah, scouring 
back, each at the head of two hundred horse, while he followed 
with the main force. 

Derar and his associates soon turned the tide of battle, rout- 
. ing Paul and his cavalry with such slaughter, that of the six 
thousand but a small part escaped to Damascus. Paul threw 
himself from his horse, and attempted to escape on foot, but 
was taken prisoner. The exultation of the victors, however, 
was damped by the intelligence that their women had been 
carried away captive, and great was the grief of Derar, on 
learning that his sister Caulah, a woman of great beauty, was 
among the number. 

In the mean time Peter and his troops, with their spoils and 
captives, had proceeded on the way to Damascus, but halted 
under some trees beside a fountain, to refresh themselves and 
divide their booty. In the division, Caulah the sister of Derar 
was allotted to Peter. This done, the captors went into their 
tents to carouse and make merry with the spoils, leaving the 
women among the baggage, bewailing their captive state. 

Caulah, however, was the worthy sister of Derar. Instead 
of weeping and wringing her hands, she reproached her com¬ 
panions with their weakness. “ What!” cried she, “ shall we, 
the daughters of warriors and followers of Mahomet, submit 
to be the slaves and paramours of barbarians and idolaters? 
For my part, sooner will I die 1” 

Among her fellow-captives were Hamzarite women, descend¬ 
ants as it is supposed of the Amalekites of old, and others of 
the tribe of Himiar, all bold viragos, accustomed from their 
youth to mount the horse, ply the bow, and launch the javelin. 
They were roused by the appeal of Caulah. “What, however, 
can we do,” cried they, “having neither sword nor lance nor 
bow?” 

“Let us each take a tent pole,” replied Caulah, “and defend 
Durselves to the utmost. God may deliver us; if not, we shall 
die and be at rest, leaving no stain upon our country.” She 
was seconded by a resolute woman named Offeirah. Her 
words prevailed. They all armed themselves with tent poles, 
and Caulah placed them closely side by side in a circle. 
“Stand firm,” said she. “Let no one pass between you; 
parry the weapons of your assailants, and strike at their 
heads.” 

With Caulah, as with her brother, the word was aeoom- 




MAHOMET AND R T 3 SUCCESSORS. 


panied by the deed; for scarce haa she spoken, when a Greek 
soldier happening to approach, with one blow of her staff she 
shattered his skull. 

The noise brought the carousers from the tents. They sur¬ 
rounded the women, and sought to pacify them; but whoever 
came within reach of their staves was sure to suffer. Peter 
was struck with the matchless form and glowing beauty of 
Caulah, as she stood, fierce and fearless, dealing her blows on 
all who approached. He charged his men not to harm her, 
and endeavored to win her by soothing words and offers of 
wealth and honor; but she reviled him as an infidel, a dog, 
and rejected with scorn his brutal love. Incensed at length by 
her taunts and menaces, he gave the word, and his followers 
rushed upon the women with their scimetars. The unequal 
combat would soon have ended, when Khaled and Derar came 
galloping with their cavalry to the rescue. Khaled was heavily 
armed; but Derar was almost naked, on a horse without a 
saddle, and brandishing a lance. 

At sight of them Peter’s heart quaked; he put a stop to the 
assault on the women, and would have made a merit of de¬ 
livering them up unharmed. “We have wives and sisters of 
our own,” said he, “and respect your courageous defence. Go 
in peace to your countrymen. ” 

He turned his horse’s head, but Caulah smote the legs of the 
animal and brought him to the ground; and Derar thrust his 
spear through the rider as he fell. Then alighting and striking 
off the head of Peter, he elevated it on the point of his lance. 
A general action ensued. The enemy were routed and pur¬ 
sued with slaughter to the gates of Damascus, and great booty 
was gained of horses and armor. 

The battle over, Paul was brought a prisoner before Khaled, 
and the gory head of his brother was shown to him. “ Such,” 
cried Khaled, “ will be your fate unless you instantly embrace 
the faith of Islam.” Paul wept over the head of his brother, 
and said he wished not to survive him. “Enough,” cried 
Khaled; the signal was given, and the head of Paul was 
severed from his body. 

The Moslem army now retired to their old camp, where they 
found Abu Obeidah, who had rallied his fugitives and in¬ 
trenched himself, for it was uncertain how near Werdan and 
his army might be. Here the weary victors reposed them¬ 
selves from their dangers and fatigues; talked over the 
fortunes of the day, and exulted in the courage of their women 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


253 


CHAPTER VIII. 

BATTLE OF AIZNADIN. 

The army of the prefect Werdan, though seventy thousand 
in number, was for the most part composed of newly levied 
troops. It lay encamped at Aiznadin, and ancient historians 
speak much of the splendid appearance of the imperial camp, 
rich in its sumptuous furniture of silk and gold, and of the 
brilliant array of the troops in burnished armor, with glitter' 
ing swords and lances. 

While thus encamped, Werdan was surprised one day to 
behold clouds of dust rising in different directions, from which 
as they advanced broke forth the flash of arms and din of 
trumpets. These were in fact the troops which Khaled had 
summoned by letter from various parts, and which, though 
widely separated, arrived at the appointed time with a punc¬ 
tuality recorded by the Arabian chroniclers as miraculous. 

The Moslems were at first a little daunted by the number and 
formidable array of the imperial host; but Khaled harangued 
them in a confident tone. “You behold,” said he, “the last 
stake of the infidels. This army vanquished and dispersed, 
they can never muster another of any force, and all Syria is 
ours.” 

The armies lay encamped in sight of each other all night, 
and drew out in battle array in the morning. 

“ Who will undertake,” said Khaled, “ to observe the enemy 
near at hand, and bring me an account of the number and 
disposition of his forces?” 

Derar immediately stepped forward. “Go,” said Khaled, 
“and Allah go with thee. But I charge thee, Derar, not to 
strike a blow unprovoked, nor to expose thy life unneces¬ 
sarily.” 

When Werdan saw a single horseman prowling in view 
of his army and noting its strength and disposition, he sent 
forth thirty horsemen to surround and capture h Derar 
retreated before them until they became separated in the 
eagerness of pursuit, then suddenly wheeling he receive 1 the, 
first upon the point of his lance, and so another and another, 
thrusting them through or striking them from their Laddies, 


254 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


until he had killed or unhorsed seventeen, and so daunted the 
rest that he was enabled to make his retreat in safety. 

Klialed reproached him with rashness and disobedience of 
orders. 

“I sought not the fight,” replied Derar. “They came forth 
against me, and I feared that God should see me turn my hack. 
He doubtless aided me, and had it not been for your orders, I 
should not have desisted when I did.” 

Being informed by Derar of the number and positions of the 
enemy’s troops, Khaled marshalled his army accordingly. He 
gave command of the right wing to Mead and Noman; the 
left to Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas and Serjabil, and took charge 
of the centre himself, accompanied by Amru, Abda’lrahman, 
Derar, Kais, Rafi, and other distinguished leaders. A body of 
four thousand horse, under Yezed Ebn Abu Sofian, was posted 
in the rear to guard the baggage and the women. 

But it was not the men alone that prepared for this mo¬ 
mentous battle. Caulah and Offeirah, and their intrepid com¬ 
panions, among whom were women of the highest rank, 
excited by their recent success, armed themselves with such 
weapons as they found at hand, and prepared to mingle in the 
fight. Khaled applauded their courage and devotion, assuring 
them that, if they fell, the gates of paradise would be open to 
them. He then formed them into two battalions, giving com¬ 
mand of one to Caulah, and of the other to Offeirah; and 
charged them, besides defending themselves against the enemy, 
to keep a strict eye upon his own troops; and whenever they 
saw a Moslem turn his back upon the foe, to slay him as a 
recreant and an apostate. Finally he rode through the ranks 
of his army, exhorting them all to fight with desperation, since 
they had wives, children, honor, religion, everything at stake, 
and no place of refuge should they be defeated. 

The war cries now arose from either army; the Christians 
shouting for “Christ and for the faith;” the Moslems, “La 
I’lahailia Allah, Mohammed Resoul Allah 1” “There is but one 
God! Mahomet is the prophet of God.” 

Just before the armies engaged, a venerable man came forth 
from among the Christians, and, approaching Khaled, de¬ 
manded, “Art thou the general of this army?” “I am con¬ 
sidered such,” replied Khaled, “while I am true to God, the 
Koran, and the prophet.” 

“Thou art come unprovoked,” said the old man, “thou and 
thy host, to invade this Christian land. Be not too certain of 

i 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


255 


success. Others who have heretofore invaded this land have 
found a tomb instead of a triumph. Look at this host. It is 
more numerous and perhaps better disciplined than thine. 
Why wilt thou tempt a battle which may end in thy defeat, 
and must at all events cost thee most lamentable bloodshed! 
Retire, then, in peace, and spare the miseries which must 
otherwise fall upon either army. Shouldst thou do so, I am 
authorized to offer, for every soldier in thy host, a suit of gar¬ 
ments, a turban, and a piece of gold; for thyself a hundred 
pieces and ten silken robes, and for thy Caliph a thousand 
pieces and a hundred robes.” 

“You proffer a part,” replied Khaled scornfully, “to one 
who will soon possess the whole. For yourselves there are but 
three conditions: embrace the faith, pay tribute, or expect the 
sword.” With this rough reply the venerable man returned 
sorrowfully to the Christian host. 

Still Khaled was unusually wary. “ Our enemies are two to 
one,” said he; “we must have patience and out wind them. 
Let us hold back until nightfall, for that with the prophet was 
the propitious time of victory.” 

The enemy now threw their Armenian archers in the ad¬ 
vance, and several Moslems were killed and wounded with 
flights of arrows. Still Khaled restrained the impatience of 
his troops, ordering that no man should stir from his post. 
The impetuous Derar at length obtained pern ission to attack 
the assaulting band of archers, and spurred vigorously upon 
them with his troop of horse. They faltered, but were re¬ 
inforced; troops were sent to sustain Derar; many were slain 
on both sides, but success inclined to the Moslems. 

The action was on the point of becoming general, when a 
horseman from the advance army galloped up, and inquired 
for the Moslem general. Khaled, considering it a challenge, 
levelled his lance for the encounter. “ Turn thy lance aside, I 
pray thee,” cried the Christian eagerly; “ I am but a messen¬ 
ger, and seek a parley.” \ 

Khaled quietly reined up his steed, and laid his lance athwart 
the pommel of his saddle: “ Speak to the purpose,” said lie, 

“ and tell no lies.” 

“I will tell the naked truth; dangerous for me to tell, but 
most important for thee to hear; but first promise protection 
for myself and family.” 

Having obtained this promise, the messenger, whose name 
was David / proceeded: “I am sei.t by Werdan to entreat that 


256 


MAHOMET AND JIIS SUCCESSORS. 


the battle may cease, and the blood of brave men be spared,* 
and that thou wilt meet him to-morrow morning, singly, in 
sight of either army, to treat of terms of peace. Such is my 
message; but beware, oh Khaled! for treason lurks beneath it. 
Ten chosen men, well armed, will be stationed in the night 
close by the place of conference, to surprise and seize, or kill 
thee, when defenceless and off thy guard.” 

He then proceeded to mention the place appointed for the con 
ference, and all the other particulars. “ Enough,” said Khaled. 
“ Return to Werdan, and tell him I agree to meet him.” 

The Moslems were astonished at hearing a retreat sounded, 
when the conflict was inclining in their favor; they withdrew 
reluctantly from the field, and Abu Obeidah and Derar de¬ 
manded of Khaled the meaning of his conduct. He informed 
them of what had just been revealed to him. “I will keep 
this appointment,” said he. “I will go singly, and will bring 
back the heads of all the assassins.” Abu Obeidah, however, 
remonstrated against his exposing himself to such unnecessary 
danger. “Take ten men with thee,” said he, “man for man.” 
“ Why defer the punishment of them perfidy until morning?” 
cried Derar. “Give me the ten men, and I will counterplot 
these lurkers this very night.” 

Having obtained permission, he picked out ten men of 
assured coolness and courage, and set off with them in the 
dead of the night for the place of ambush. As they drew near 
Derar caused his companions to halt, and, putting off his 
clothes to prevent all rustling noise, crept warily with his 
naked scimetar to the appointed ground. Here he beheld the 
ten men fast asleep, with their weapons beneath their heads. 
Returning silently, and beckoning his companions, they sin¬ 
gled out each his man, so that the whole were dispatched at 
a blow. They then stripped the dead, disguised themselves in 
their clothes, and awaited the coming day. 

The rising sun shone on the two armies drawn out in battle 
array, and awaiting the parley of the chiefs. Werdan rode 
forth on a white mule, and was arrayed in rich attire, with 
chains of gold and precious stones. Khaled was clad in a 
yellow silk vest and green turban. He suffered himself to be 
drawn by Werdan toward the place of ambush; then, alighting 
and seating themselves on the ground, they entered into a 
parley. Their conference was brief and boisterous. Each 
considered the other in his power, and conducted himself with 
haughtiness and acrimony. Werdan spoke of the Moslems as 


MAUOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


257 

needy spoilers, who lived by the sword, and invaded the fer¬ 
tile territories of their neighbors in quest of plunder. “We, 
on the other hand,” said he, “are wealthy, and desire peace. 
Speak, what do you require to relieve your wants and satisfy 
your rapacity?” 

Miserable infidel!” replied Khaled. “We are not so poor 
as to accept alms at your hands. Allah provides for us. You 
offer us a part of what is ad our own; for Allah has put all 
that you have into our hands,- even to your Avives and chil¬ 
dren. But do you desire peace? We have already told you 
our conditions. Either acknowledge that there is no other 
God but God, and that Mahomet is his prophet, or pay us 
such tribute as we may impose. Do you refuse? For what, 
then, have you brought me here? You knew our terms yester¬ 
day, and that all your propositions were rejected. Do you 
entice me here alone for single combat? Be it so, and let "our 
weapons decide between us.” 

So saying, he sprang upon his feet. Werdan also rose, bu L 
expecting instant aid, neglected to draw his sword. Khale^ 
seized him by the throat, upon which he called loudly to his 
men in ambush. The Moslems in ambush rushed forth, and, 
deceived by their Grecian dresses, Werdan for an instant 
thought himself secure. As they drew near he discovered his 
mistake, and shrank with horror at the sight of Derar, who 
advanced, almost naked, brandishing a scimetar, and in whom 
he recognized the slayer of his son. “Mercy! Mercy!” cried 
he to Khaled, at finding himself caught in his own snare. 

“ There is no mercy,” replied Khaled, “ for him who has no 
faith. You came to me with peace on your lips, but murder 
in your heart. Your crime be upon your head.” 

The sentence was no sooner pronounced than the powerful 
SAvord of Derar performed its office, and the head of Werdan 
was struck off at a blow. The gory trophy was elevated on 
the point of a lance and borne by the little band toward the 
Christian troops, who, deceived by the Greek disguises, sup¬ 
posed it the head of Khaled and shouted with joy. Their 
triumph was soon turned to dismay as they discovered their 
error. Khaled did not suffer them to recover from their con¬ 
fusion, but bade his trumpets sound a general charge. What 
ensued was a massacre rather than a battle. The imperial 
army broke and fled in all directions; some toward Caesarea, 
others to Damascus, and others to Antioch. The booty was 
immense: crosses of silver and gold, adorned with precious 


258 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


stones, rich chains and bracelets, jewels of price, silken robes, 
armor and weapons of all kinds, and numerous banners, all 
which Khaled declared should not be divided until after the 
capture of Damascus. 

Tidings of this great victory was sent to the Caliph at Me¬ 
dina, by his brave and well-beloved son Abdalrahman. On 
receiving it, Abu Beker prostrated himself and returned thanks 
to God. The news spread rapidly throughout Arabia. Hosts 
of adventurers hurried to Medina from all parts, and especially 
from Mecca. All were eager to serve in the cause of the faith, 
now that they found it crowned with conquest and rewarded 
with riches. 

The worthy Abu Beker was disposed to gratify their wishes, 
but Omar, on being consulted, sternly objected. “The greater 
part of these fellows,” said he, “who are so eager to join us now 
that we are successful, are those who sought to crush us when 
we were few and feeble. They care not for the faith, but they 
long to ravish the rich fields of Syria, and share the plunder of 
Damascus. Send them not to the army to make brawls and 
dissensions. Those already there are sufficient to complete 
what they have begun. They have won the victory; let them 
enjoy the spoils.” 

In compliance with this advice, Abu Beker refused the 
prayer of the applicants. Upon this the people of Mecca, and 
especially those of the tribe of Koreish, sent a powerful depu¬ 
tation, headed by Abu Sofian, to remonstrate with the Caliph. 
“Why are we denied permission,” said they, “ to fight in the 
cause of our religion? It is true that in the days of darkness 
and ignorance we made war on the disciples of the prophet, 
because we thought we were doing God service. Allah, how¬ 
ever, has blessed us with the light; we have seep and re¬ 
nounced our former errors. We are your brethren in the 
faith, as we have ever been your kindred in blood, and hereby 
take upon ourselves to fight in the common cause. Let there 
then no longer be jealousy and envy between us.” 

The heart of the Caliph was moved by these remonstrances. 
He consulted with Ali and Omar, and it was agreed that the 
tribe of Koreish should be permitted to join the army. Abu 
Beker accordingly wrote to Khaled congratulating him on his 
success, and informing him that a large reinforcement would 
^oin him conducted by Abu Sofian. This letter he sealed 'with 
Tie seal of the prophet, and dispatched it by his son Abda’lrah* 
man. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


259 


CHAPTER IX. 

OCCURRENCES BEFORE DAMASCUS—EXPLOITS OF THOMAS—ABAN 
IBN ZEID AND HIS AMAZONIAN WIFE. 

The fugitives from the field of Aiznadin carried to Damascus 
the dismal tidings that the army was overthrown, and the last 
hope of succor destroyed. Great was the consternation of the 
inhabitants, yet they set to work, with desperate activity, to 
prepare for the coming storm. The fugitives had reinforced the 
garrison with several thousand effective men. New fortifica¬ 
tions were hastily erected. The walls were lined with engines 
to discharge stones and darts, which were managed by Jews 
skilled in their use. 

In the midst of their preparation, they beheld squadron 
after squadron of Moslem cavalry emerging from among dis¬ 
tant groves, while a lengthening line of foot soldiers poured 
along between the gardens. This was the order of march of 
the Moslem host. The advance guard,, of upward of nine 
thousand horsemen, was led by Amru. Then came two thou¬ 
sand Koreishite horse, led by Abu Sofian. Then a like num¬ 
ber under Serjabil. Then Omar Ibn Rabiyah with a similar 
division; then the main body of the army led by Abu Obeidah, 
and lastly the rear-guard displaying the black eagle, the fateful 
banner of Khaled, and led by that invincible warrior. 

Khaled now assembled his captains, and assigned to them 
their different stations. Abu Sofian was posted opposite the 
southern gate. Serjabil opposite that of St. Thomas. Amru 
before that of Paradise, and Kais Ibn Hobeirah before that of 
Kaisan. Abu Obeidah encamped at some distance, in front of 
the gate of Jabiyah, and was charged to be strict and vigilant, 
and to make frequent assaults, for Khaled knew his humane 
and easy nature. As to Khaled himself, he took his station 
and planted his black eagle before the eastern gate. 

There was still a southern gate, that of St. Mark, so situated 
that it was not practicable to establish posts or engage in 
skirmishes before it: it was, therefore, termed the Gate of 
Peace. As to the active and impetuous Derar, he was ordered 
to patrol round the walls and scour the adjacent plain at the 
head of two thousand horse, protecting the camp from surprise 
and preventing supplies and reinforcements to the city. ‘ ‘ If 
you should be attacked,” said Khaled, “send me word, and I 


260 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


will come to your assistance.” “And must I stand peaceably 
until you arrive?” said Derar, in recollection of former re¬ 
proofs of his rash contests. “ Not so,” rejoined Khaled, “ but 
fight stoutly, and be assured I will not fail you. The rest of 
the army were dismounted to carry on the siege on foot. 

The Moslems were now better equipped for war than ever, 
having supplied themselves with armor and weapons taken in 
repeated battles. As yet, however, they retained their Arab 
frugality and plainness, neglecting the delicate viands, the 
sumptuous raiment, and other luxurious indulgences of their 
enemies. Even Abu Obeidah, in the humility of his spiiit, 
contented himself with his primitive Arab tent of camel’s hair; 
refusing the sumptuous tents of the Christian commanders, 
won in the recent battle. Such were the stern and simple' 
minded invaders of the effeminate and sensual nations of the 
East. 

The first assaults of the Moslems were bravely repelled, and 
many were slain by darts and stones hurled by the machines 
from the wall. The garrison even ventured to make a sally, 
but were driven back with signal slaughter. The siege was 
then pressed with unremitting rigor, until no one dared to 
venture beyond the bulwarks. The principal inhabitants now 
consulted together whether it were not best to capitulate, 
while there was yet a chance of obtaining favorable terms. 

There was at this time living in Damascus a noble Greek, 
named Thomas, who was married to a daughter of the emperor 
Heraclius. He held no post, but was greatly respected, for he 
was a man of talents and consummate courage. In this mo¬ 
ment of general depression he endeavored to rouse the spirits 
of the people; representing their invaders as despicable, bar¬ 
barous, naked, and poorly armed, without discipline or mili¬ 
tary service, and formidable only through their mad fanati¬ 
cism, and the panic they had spread through the country. 

Finding all arguments in vain, he offered to take the lead 
himself, if they would venture upon another sally. His offer 
was accepted, and the next morning appointed for the effort. 

Khaled perceived a stir of preparation throughout the night, 
lights gleaming in the turrets and along the battlements, and 
exhorted his men to be vigilant, for he anticipated some des¬ 
perate movement. “ Let no man sleep,” said he. “ We shall 
have rest enough after death, and sweet will be the repose that 
is never more to be followed by labor.” 

The Christians were sadly devout in this hour of extremity. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


261 


At early dawn the bishop, in his robes, proceeded at the head 
of the clergy to the gate by which the sally was to be made, 
where he elevated the cross, and laid beside if the New Testa¬ 
ment. As Thomas passed out at the gate, he laid his hand 
upon the sacred volume. “Oh God!” exclaimed he, “if our 
faith be true, aid us, and deliver us not into the hands of its 
enemies.” 

The Moslems, who had been on the alert, were advancing to 
attack just at the time of the sally, but were checked by a gen¬ 
eral discharge from the engines on the wall. Thomas led his 
troops bravely to the encounter, and the conflict was fierce 
and bloody. He was a dexterous archer, and singled out the 
most conspicuous of the Moslems, who fell one after another 
beneath his shafts. Among others, he wounded Aban Ibn Zeid 
with an arrow tipped with poison. The latter bound up the 
wound with his turban, and continued in the field, but being 
overcome by t’he venom was conveyed to the camp. He had 
but recently been married to a beautiful woman of the intrepid 
race of the Himiar, one of those Amazons accustomed to use 
the bow and arrow, and to mingle in warfare. 

Hearing that her husband was wounded, she hastened to his 
tent, but before she could reach it he had expired. She uttered 
no lamentation, nor shed a tear, but, bending over the body, 
“ Happy art thou, oh my beloved,” said she, “for thou art with 
Allah, who joined us but to part us from each other. But I 
will avenge thy death, and then seek to join thee in paradise. 
Henceforth shall no man touch me more, for I dedicate myself 
to God.” 

Then grasping her husband’s bow and arrows, she hastened 
to the field in quest of Thomas, who, she had been told, was 
the slayer of her husband. Pressing toward the place where 
he was fighting, she let fly a shaft, which wounded his stand¬ 
ard-bearer in the hand. The standard fell, and was borne off 
by the. Moslems. Thomas pursued it, laying about him furi¬ 
ously, and calling upon his men to rescue their banner. It was 
shifted from hand to hand until it came into that of Serjabil. 
Thomas assailed him with his scimetar; Serjabil threw the 
standard among his troops and closed with him. They fought, 
with equal ardor, but Thomas was gaining the advantage, 
when an arrow, shot by the wife of Aban, smote him in the 
eye. He staggered with the wound, but his men, abandoning 
tiie contested standard, rushed to his support and bore him off 
to the city. He refused to retire to his home, and, his wound 


262 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


being dressed on the ramparts, would have returned to tho 
conflict, but was overruled by the public. He took his station, 
however, at the city gate, whence he could survey the field and 
issue his orders. The battle continued with great fury; but 
such showers of stones and darts and other missiles were dis¬ 
charged by the Jews from the engines on the walls that the be¬ 
siegers were kept at a distance. Night terminated the conflict. 
The Moslems returned to their camp wearied with a long day’s 
fighting; and, throwing themselves on the earth, were soon 
buried in profound sleep. 

Thomas, finding the courage of the garrison roused by the 
stand they had that day made, resolved to put it to further 
proof. At his suggestion preparations were made in the dead 
of the night for a general sally at daybreak from all the gates 
of the city. At the signal of a single stroke upon a bell at the 
first peep of dawn, all the gates were thrown open, and from 
each rushed forth a torrent of warriors upon the nearest en¬ 
campment. 

So silently had the preparations been made that the besiegers 
Were completely taken by surprise. The trumpets sounded 
alarms, the Moslems started from sleep and snatched up their 
weapons, but the enemy were already upon them, and struck 
them down before they had recovered from their amazement. 
For a time it was a slaughter rather than a fight, at the vari¬ 
ous stations. Kbaled is said to have shed tears at beholding 
the carnage. “ Oh thou, who never sleepest!” cried he, in the 
agony of his heart, “aid thy faithful servants; let them not 
fall beneath the weapons of these infidels. ” Then, followed by 
four hundred horsemen, he spurred about the field wherever 
relief was most needed. 

The hottest of the fight was opposite the gate whence Thomas 
had sallied. Here Serjabil had his station, and fought with 
undaunted valor. Near him was the intrepid wife of Aban, 
doing deadly execution with her shafts. She had expended all 
but one, when a Greek soldier attempted to seize her. In an 
instant the arrow was sped through his throat, and laid him 
dead at her feet; but she was now weaponless, and was taken 
prisoner. 

At the same time Serjabil and Thomas were again engaged 
hand to hand with equal valor; but the scimetar of Serjabil 
broke on the buckler of his adversary, and ho was on the point 
of being slain or captured, when Khaled and Abda’lrahman 
galloped up with a troop of horse. Thomas was obliged to 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 263 

take refuge in the city, and fc?erjabtf and the Amazonian widow 
were rescued. 

The troops who sallied out at che gate of Jabiyah met with 
the severest treatment. The meek Abu Obeidah was stationed 
in front of that gate, and was slumbering quietly in his hair 
tent at the time of the sally. His first care in the moment of 
alarm was to repeat the morning prayer. He then ordered 
forth a body of chosen men to keep the enemy at bay, and 
while they were fighting, led another detachment, silently but 
rapidly, round between the combatants and the city. The 
Greeks thus suddenly found themselves assailed in front and 
rear; they fought desperately, but so successful was the strata¬ 
gem, and so active the valor of the meek Abu Obeidah, when 
once aroused, that never a man, says the Arabian historian, 
that sallied from that gate, returned again. 

The battle of the night was almost as sanguinary as that of 
the day; the Christians were repulsed in all quarters, and 
driven once more within their walls, leaving several thousand 
dead upon the field. The Moslems followed them to the very 
gates, but were compelled to retire by the deadly shower 
hurled by the Jews from the engines on the walls. 


CHAPTER X. 

SURRENDER OF DAMASCUS—DISPUTES OF THE SARACEN GENERALS 
—DEPARTURE OF THOMAS AND THE EXILES. 

For seventy days had Damascus been besieged by the fa¬ 
natic legions of the desert: the inhabitants had no longer the 
heart to make further sallies, but again began to talk of ca¬ 
pitulating. It was in vain that Thomas urged them to have 
patience until he should write to the emperor for succor; they 
listened only to their fears, and sent to Khaled begging a truce, 
that they might have tune to treat of a surrender. That fierce 
warrior turned a deaf ear to their prayer: he wished for no 
surrender, that would protect the lives and property of the be¬ 
sieged ; he was bent upon taking the city by the sword, and 
giving it up to be plundered by his Arabs. 

In their extremity the people of Damascus turned to the 
good Abu Obeidah, whom they knew to be meek and humane. 



264 


MAHOMET AMD MIS AJCCESSORS. 


Having first treated with him by a messenger who understood 
Arabic, and received his promise of security, a hundred of the 
principal inhabitants, including the most venerable of the 
clergy, issued privately one night by the gate ot Jabiyah, and 
sought his presence. They found this leader of a mighty force, 
that was shaking the empire of the Orient, living in a humble 
tent of hair cloth, like a mere wanderer of the desert. He 
listened favorably to their propositions, for his object was con¬ 
version rather than conquest; tribute rather than plunder. 
A covenant was soon written, in which he engaged that 
hostilities should cease on their delivering the city into his 
hands; that such of the inhabitants as pleased might depart 
in safety with as much of their effects as they could carry, 
and those who remained as tributaries should retain their 
property, and have seven churches allotted to them. This 
covenant was not signed by Abu Obeidah, not being com¬ 
mander-in-chief, but he assured the envoys it would be held, 
sacred by the Moslems. 

The capitulation being arranged, and hostages given for the 
good faith of the besieged, the gate opposite to the encamp¬ 
ment of Abu Obeidah was thrown open, and the venerable 
chief entered at the head of a hundred men to take possession. 

While these transactions were taking place at the gate of 
Jabiyah, a different scene occurred at the eastern gate. 
Khaled was exasperated by the death of a brother of Amru, 
shot from the walls with a poisoned arrow. In the height of 
his indignation, an apostate priest, named Josias, undertook 
to deliver the gate into his hands, on condition of security of 
person and property for himself and his relatives. 

By means of this traitor, a hundred Arabs were secretly 
introduced within the walls, who. rushing to the eastern gate, 
broke the bolts and bars and chains by which it was fastened, 
and threw it open with the signal shout of Allah Aclibar! 

Khaled and his legions poured in at the gate with sound of 
trumpet and tramp of steed; putting all to the sword, and 
deluging the streets with blood. “Mercy! Mercy!” was the 
cry. “No mercy for infidels!” was Khaled’s fierce response. 

He pursued his career of carnage into the great square be- 
fore the church of the Virgin Mary. Here, to his astonish¬ 
ment, he beheld Abu Obeidah and his attendants, their swords 
sheathed, and marching in solemn procession with priests and 
monus and the principal inhabitants, and s^rounded by 
women and children. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


265 


Abu Obeidah saw fury and surprise in the looks of Khaled, 
and hastened to propitiate him by gentle words. “Allah in 
his mercy,” said he, “has delivered this city into my hands 
by peaceful surrender; sparing the effusion of blood and the 
necessity of fighting.” 

“ Not so,” cried Khaled in a furo. “ I have won it with thus 
sword, and I grant no quarter.” 

“ But I have given the inhabitants a covenant written with 
my own hand.” 

“And what right had you, ” demanded Klialed, “to grant a 
capitulation without consulting me? Am I not the general? 
Yes, by Allah! and to prove it I will put every inhabitant to 
the sword. ” 

Abu Obeidah felt that in point of military duty he had erred, 
but he sought to pacify Khaled, assuring him he had intended 
all for the best, and felt sure of his approbation, entreating 
him to respect the covenant he had made in the name of God 
and the prophet, and with the approbation of all the Moslems 
present at the transaction. 

Several of the Moslem officers' seconded Abu Obeidah, and 
endeavored to persuade Khaled to agree to the capitulation. 
While he hesitated, his troops, impatient of delay, resumed 
the work of massacre and pillage. 

The patience of the good Abu Obeidah was at an end. “ By 
Allah!” cried he, “my word is treated as nought, and my 
covenant is trampled under foot!” 

Spurring his horse among the marauders, he commanded 
them, in the name of the prophet, to desist until he and 
Khaled should have time to settle their dispute. The name of 
the prophet had its effect; the soldiery paused in their bloody 
career, and the two generals with their officers retired to the 
church of the Virgin. 

Here, after a sharp altercation, Khaled, callous to all claims 
of justice and mercy, was brought to listen to policy. It was 
represented to him that he was invading a country where 
many cities were yet to be taken; that it was important to 
respect the capitulations of his generals, even though they 
might not be altogether to his mind; otherwise the Moslem 
word would cease to be trusted, and other cities, warned by 
the fate of Damascus, instead of surrendering */n favorable 
terms, might turn a deaf ear to all offers of mercy and fight to 
the last extremity. 

It was with the utmost difficulty that Abu Obeidah wrung 


266 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


from the iron soul of Khaled a slow consent to his capitulation, 
on condition that the whole matter should he referred to the 
Caliph. At every article he paused and murmured. He 
would fain have inflicted death upon Thomas, and another 
leader named Herbis, but Abu Obeidah insisted that they were 
expressly included in the covenant. 

Proclamation was then made that such of the inhabitants as 
chose to remain tributaries to the Caliph should enjoy the 
exercise of their religion; the rest were permitted to depart. 
The greater part preferred to remain; but some determined to 
follow their champion Thomas to Antioch. The latter prayed 
for a passport or a safe-conduct through the country con¬ 
trolled by the Moslems. After much difficulty Khaled granted 
them three days’ grace, during which they should be safe from 
molestation or pursuit, on condition they took nothing with 
them but provisions. 

Here the worthy Abu Obeidah interfered, declaring that he 
had covenanted to let them go forth with bag and baggage. 
‘‘Then,” said Khaled, “ they shall go unarmed.” Again Abu 
Obeidah interfered, and Khaled at length consented that they 
should have arms sufficient to defend themselves against rob¬ 
bers and wild beasts; he, however, who had a lance, should 
have no sword; and he who had a bow should have no lance. 

Thomas and Herbis, who were to conduct tins unhappy 
caravan, pitched their tents in the meadow adjacent to the 
city, whither all repaired who were to follow them into exile, 
each laden with plate, jewels, silken stuffs, and whatever was 
most precious and least burdensome. Among other things was 
a wardrobe of the emperor Heraclius, in which there were 
above three hundred loads of costly silks and cloth of gold. 

All being assembled, the sad multitude set forth on their 
wayfaring. Those who from pride, from patriotism, or from 
religion, thus doomed themselves to poverty and exile, were 
among the noblest and most highly bred of the land; people 
accustomed to soft and luxurious life, and to the silken abodes 
of palaces. Of this number was the wife of Thomas, a daughter 
of the emperor Heraclius, who was attended by her maidens. 
It was a piteous sight to behold aged men, delicate and shrink¬ 
ing women, and helpless children, thus setting forth on a 
wandering journey through wastes and deserts, and rugged 
mountains, infested by savage hordes. Many a time did they 
turn to cut a look of fondness and despair on those sumptuous 
palaces and delightful gardens, once their pride and joy; and 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


267 


still would they turn and weep, and beat their breasts, and 
gaze through their tears on the stately towers of Damascus, and 
the flowery banks of the Pharpar. 

Thus terminated the hard-contested siege of Damascus, 
which Voltaire has likened for its stratagems, skirmishes, and 
single combats to Homer’s siege of Troy. More than twelve 
months elapsed between the time the Saracens first pitched 
their tents before it and the day of its surrender. 


CHAPTER XI. 

STORY OF JONAS AND EUDOCEA—PURSUIT OF THE EXILES—DEATH 
OF THE CALIPH ABU BEKER. 

It is recorded that Derar gnashed his teeth with rage at see¬ 
ing the multitude of exiles departing in peace, laden with 
treasures, which he considered as so much hard-earned spoil, 
lost to the faithful; hut what most incensed him was, that so 
many unbelievers should escape the edge of the scimetar. 
Khaled would have been equally indignant, but that he had 
secretly covenanted with himself to regain this booty. For 
this purpose he ordered his men to refresh themselves and 
their horses, and be in readiness for action, resolving to pursue 
the exiles when the three days of grace should have expired. 

A dispute with Abu Obeidah concerning a quantity of grain, 
which the latter claimed for the citizens, detained him one day 
longer, and he was about to abandon the pursuit as hopeless, 
when a guide presented himself who knew all the country, 
and the shortest passes through the mountains. The story of 
this guide is worthy of notice, as illustrating the character of 
these people and these wars. 

During the siege Derar, as has been related, was appointed 
to patrol round the city and the camp with two thousand 
horse. As a party of these were one night going their rounds, 
near the walls, they heard the distant neighing of a horse, and 
looking narrowly round, descried a horseman coming stealthily 
from the gate Keisan. Halting in a shadowy place, they waited 
until he came close to them, when, rushing forth, they made 
him prisoner. He was a youthful Syrian, richly and gallantly 
arrayed, and apparently a person of distinction. Scarcely had 



^68 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


they seized him when they beheld another horseman issuing 
r rom the same gate, who in a soft voice called upon their cap¬ 
tive, by the name of Jonas. They commanded the latter to 
invite his companion to advance. He seemed to reply, and 
called out something in Greek: upon hearing which the other 
turned bridle and galloped back into the city. The Arabs, igno¬ 
rant of Greek, and suspecting the words to be a warning, would 
have slain their prisoner on the spot; but, upon second thoughts, 
conducted him to Khaled. 

The youth avowed himself a nobleman of Damascus, and 
betrothed to a beautiful maiden named Eudocea; but her par- • 
ents, from some capricious reason, had withdrawn their con¬ 
sent to his nuptials; whereupon the lovers had secretly agreed 
to fly from Damascus. A sum of gold had bribed the sentinels 
who kept watch that night at the gate. The damsel, disguised 
in male attire, and accompanied by two domestics, was follow¬ 
ing her lover at a distance, as he sallied in advance. His reply 
iri Greek when she called upon him was, “ The bird is caught!” 
a warning at the hearing of which she had fled back to the 
city. 

Khaled was not the man to be moved by a love tale; but he 
gave the prisoner his alternative. “ Embrace the faith of 
Islam,” said he, “and when Damascus falls into our power, 
you shall have your betrothed; refuse, and your head is for¬ 
feit.” 

The youth paused not between a scimetar and a bride. He 
made immediate profession of faith between the hands of Khaled, 
and thenceforth fought zealously for the capture of the city, 
since its downfall was to crown his hopes. 

When Damascus yielded to its foes, he sought the dwelling 
of Eudocea, and learnt a new proof of her affection. Supposing, 
on his capture by the Arabs, that he had fallen a martyr to 
his faith, she had renounced the world, and shut herself up in 
a convent. With throbbing heart he hastened to the convent, 
but when the lofty-minded maiden beheld in him a renegade, 
she turned from him with scorn, retired to her cell, and refused 
to see him more. She was among the noble ladies who followed 
Thomas and Ilerbis into exile. Her lover, frantic at the 
thoughts of losing her, reminded Khaled of his promise to re¬ 
store her to him, and entreated that she might be detained; but 
Khaled pleaded the covenant of Abu Obeidah, according to 
which all had free leave to depart. 

When Jonas afterward discovered that Khaled meditated a 


MAHO'MET AND HIS ST7CCESS0RS. 


269 


pursuit of the exiles, but was discouraged by the lapse of time, 
he offered to conduct him by short and secret passes through 
the mountains, which would insure his overtaking them. His 
offer was accepted. On the fourth day after the departure of 
the exiles, Khaled set out in pursuit, with four thousand chosen 
horsemen; who, by the advice of Jonas, were disguised as 
Christian Arabs. For some time they traced the exiles along 
the plains, by the numerous footprints of mules and camels, 
and by articles thrown away to enable them to travel more 
expeditiously. At length the footprints turned toward the 
mountains of Lebanon, and were lost in their arid and rocky 
defiles. The Moslems began to falter. “Courage!” cried 
Jonas, “they will be entangled among the mountains. They 
cannot now escape.” 

They continued their weary course, stopping only at the 
stated hours of prayer. They had now to climb the high and 
cragged passes of Lebanon, along rifts and glens worn by 
winter torrents. The horses struck fire at every tramp; they 
cast their shoes, their hoofs were battered on the rocks, and 
many of them were lamed and disabled. The horsemen dis¬ 
mounted and scrambled up on foot, leading their weary and 
crippled steeds. Their clothes were worn to shreds, and the 
soles of their iron-shod boots were tom from the upper leathers. 
The men murmured and repined; never in all their marches 
had they experienced such hardships; they insisted on halting, 
to rest and to bait their horses. Even Khaled, whose hatred 
of infidels furnished an impulse almost equal to the lover’s pas¬ 
sion, began to flag, and reproached the renegade as the cause 
of all this trouble. 

Jonas still urged them forward: he pointed to fresh foot¬ 
prints and tracks of horses that must have recently passed. 
After a few hours’ refreshment they resumed the pursuit; 
passing within sight of Jabalah and Laodicea, but without ven¬ 
turing within their gates, lest the disguise of Christian Arabs, 
which deceived the simple peasantry, might not avail with the 
shrewder inhabitants of the towns. 

Intelligence received from a country boor increased their 
perplexity. The emperor Heraclius, fearing that the arrival of 
the exiles might cause a panic at Antioch, had sent orders for 
them to proceed along the sea-coast to Constantinople. This 
gave their pursuers a greater chance to overtake them; but 
Khaled was startled at learning, in addition, that troops were 
assembling to be sent against him, and that but a single momr 


270 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

tain separated him from them. He now feared they might 
intercept his return, or fall upon Damascus in his absence. A 
sinister dream added to his uneasiness, but it was fa yorably in¬ 
terpreted by Abda’lrahman, and he continued the pursuit. 

A tempestuous night closed on them: the rain fell in torrents, 
and man and beast were ready to sink with fatigue; still they 
were urged forward; the fugitives could not be far distant, the 
enemy was at hand: they must snatch their prey and retreat. 
The morning dawned; the storm cleared up, and the sun shone 
brightly on the surrounding heights. They dragged their steps 
wearily, however, along the defiles, now swept by torrents or 
filled with |nire, until the scouts in the advance gave joyful 
signal from the mountain brow. It commanded a grassy 
meadow, sprinkled with flowers, and watered by a running 
stream. 

On the borders of the rivulet was the caravan of exiles, repos¬ 
ing in the sunshine from the fatigues of the recent storm. 
Some were sleeping on the grass, others were taking their morn¬ 
ing repast; while the meadow was gay with embroidered robes 
and silks of various dyes spread out to dry upon the herbage. 
The weary Moslems, worn out with the horrors of the moun¬ 
tains, gazed with delight on the sweetness and freshness of the 
meadow; but Khaled eyed the caravan with an eager eye, and 
the lover only stretched his gaze to catch a glimpse of his be¬ 
trothed among the females reclining on the margin of the 
stream. 

Having cautiously reconnoitred the caravan without being 
perceived, Khaled disposed of his band in four squadrons; the 
first commanded by Derar, the second by Rafi Ibn Omeirah, the 
third by Abda’lrahman, and the fourth led. by himself. He 
gave orders that the squadrons should make their appearance 
successively, one at a time, to deceive the enemy as to their 
force, and that there should be no pillaging until the victory 
was complete. 

Having offered up a prayer, he gave the word to his division, 
‘ ‘ In the name of Allah and the prophet!” and led to the attack. 
The Christians were roused from their repose on beholding a 
squadron rushing down from the mountain. They were de¬ 
ceived at first by the Greek dresses, but were soon aware of 
the truth; though the small number of the enemy gave them 
but little dread. Thomas hastily marshalled five thousand men 
to receive the shock of the onset, with such weapons as had 
been left them. Another and another division came hurrying 


MAHOMET AJSD IJIS SUCCESSORS. 


271 


down from the mountain; and the fight was furious and well 
contested. Thomas and Khaled fought hand to hand; hut the 
Christian champion was struck to the ground. Abda’lrahman 
cut off his head, elevated it on the spear of the standard of the 
cross which he had taken at Damascus, and called upon the 
Christians to behold the head of them leader. 

Kafi Ibn Omeirah penetrated with his division into the midst 
of the encampment to capture the women. They stood coura¬ 
geously on the defensive, hurling stones at their assailants. 
Among them was a female of matchless beauty, dressed in 
splendid attire, with a diadem of jewels. It was the reputed 
daughter of the emperor, the wife of Thomas. Itafi attempted 
to seize her, but she hurled a stone that struck his horse in the 
head and killed him. The Arab drew his scimetar, and would 
have slain her, but she cried for mercy, so he took her prisoner, 
and gave her in charge to a trusty follower. 

In the midst of the carnage and confusion Jonas hastened in 
search of his betrothed. If she had treated him with disdain 
as a renegade, she now regarded him with horror, as the traitor 
who had brought tliis destruction upon his unhappy country¬ 
men. All his entreaties for her to forgive and be reconciled to 
him were of no avail. She solemnly vowed to repair to Con¬ 
stantinople and end her days in a convent. Finding supplica¬ 
tion fruitless, he seized her, and after a violent struggle, threw 
her on the ground and made her prisoner. She made no fur¬ 
ther resistance, but submitting to captivity, seated herself 
quietly on the grass. The lover flattered himself that she re¬ 
lented ; but, watching her opportunity, she suddenly drew forth 
a poniard, plunged it in her breast, and fell dead at his feet. 

While this tragedy was performing, the general battle, or 
rather carnage, continued. Khaled ranged the field in quest 
of Herbis, but, while fighting pell-mell among a throng of 
Christians, that commander came behind him and dealt a blow 
that severed his helmet, and would have cleft his skull but for 
the folds of his turban. The sword of Herbis fell from his 
hand with the violence of the blow, and before he could recover 
it he was cut in pieces by the followers of Khaled. The strug¬ 
gle of the unhappy Christians was at an end; all were slain, or 
taken prisoners, except one, who was permitted to depart, and 
who hore the dismal tidings of the massacre to Constantinople. 

The renegade Jonas was loud in his lamentations for the loss 
of his betrothed, but his Moslem comrades consoled him with 
one of the doctrines of the faith he had newly embraced. “ It 


272 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 




was written in the book of fat},” said they, “that you should 
never possess that woman; bur be comforted, Allah has doubt- 
less greater blessings in store for you;” and, in fact, Eafi Ibn 
Omeirah, out of compassion for his distress, presented him 
with the beautiful princess he had taken captive. Khaled con¬ 
sented to the gift, provided the emperor did not send to ransom 
her. 

There was now no time to be lost. In this headlong pursuit 
they had penetrated above a hundred and fifty miles into the 
heart of the enemy’s country, and might be cut off in their 
retreat. “ To horse and away, ” therefore, was the word. The 
plunder was hastily packed upon the mules, the scanty num¬ 
ber of surviving exiles were secured, and the marauding band 
set off on a forced march for Damascus. While on their way, 
they were one day alarmed by a cloud of dust, through which 
their scouts descried the banner of the cross. They prepared 
for a desperate conflict. It proved, however, a peaceful mis¬ 
sion. An ancient bishop, followed by a numerous train, 
sought from Khaled, in the emperor’s name, the liberation of 
his daughter. The haughty Saracen released her without 
ransom. “ Take her,” said he, “but tell your master I intend 
to have him in exchange; never will I cease this war until I 
have wrested from him every foot of territory. ” 

To indemnify the renegade for this second deprivation, a 
large sum of gold was given him, wherewith to buy a wife 
from among the captives; but he now disclaimed forever all 
earthly love, and, like a devout Mahometan, looked forward 
for consolation among the black-eyed Houris of paradise. He 
continued more faithful to his new faith and new companions 
than he had been to the religion of his fathers and the friends 
of his infancy; and after serving the Saracens in a variety of 
ways, earned an undoubted admission to the paradise of the 
prophet, being shot through the breast at the battle of Yer- 
mouk. 

Thus perished this apostate, says the Christian chronicler; 
but Alwakedi, the venerable Cadi of Bagdad, adds a supple¬ 
ment to the story, for the encouragement of all proselytes to 
the Islam faith. He states that Jonas, after his death, was 
seen in a vision by Rafi Ibn Omeirah, arrayed in rich robes 
and golden sandals, and walking in a flowery mead; and the 
beatified renegade assured him that, for his exemplary ser¬ 
vices, Allah had given him seventy of the black-eyed damsels 
of paradise, each of resplendent beauty, sufficient to throw the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


273 


sun and moon in the shade. Rafi related his vision to Khaled, 
who heard it with implicit faith. ‘ ‘ This it is, ” said that Moslem 
zealot, “to die a martyr to the faith. Happy the man to 
whose lot it falls !”* 

Khaled succeeded in leading his adventurous band safely 
back to Damascus, where they were joyfully received by their 
companions in arms, who had entertained great fears for their 
safety. He now divided the rich spoils taken in his expedi¬ 
tion ; four parts were given to the officers and soldiers, a fifth 
he reserved for the public treasury, and sent it off to the 
Caliph, with letters informing him 6f the capture of Damascus; 
of his disputes with Abu Obeidah as to the treatment of the 
city and its inhabitants, and lastly of his expedition in pursuit 
of the exiles, and his recovery of the wealth they were bearing 
away. These missives were sent in the confident expectation 
that his policy of the sword would far outshine, in the estima¬ 
tion of the Caliph, and of all true Moslems, the more peaceful 
policy of Abu Obeidah. 

It was written in the book of fate, say the Arabian histo¬ 
rians, that the pious Abu Beker should die without hearing of 
the brightest triumph of the Islam faith; the very day that 
Damascus surrendered, the Caliph breathed his last at Medina. 
Arabian authors differ as to the cause of Iris death. Abulfeda 
asserts that he was poisoned by the Jews, in his frugal repast 
of rice; but his daughter Ayesha, with more probability, as¬ 
cribes his death to bathing on an unusually cold day, which 
threw him into a fever. While struggling with his malady, 
he directed his chosen friend Omar to perform the religious 
functions of his office in his stead. 

Feeling his end approaching, he summoned his secretary, 
Othman Ibn Affan, and in presence of several of the principal 
Moslems, dictated as follows: “I, Abu Beker Ibn Abu Kahafa, 
being on the point of leaving this world for the next, and at 
that moment when infidels believe, when the wicked cease to 
doubt, and when liars speak the truth, do make this declara¬ 
tion of my will to the Moslems. I nominate as my successor” 
—Here he was overtaken with faintness so that he could not 
speak. Othman, who knew his intentions, added the name of 
Omar Ibn al Khattab. When Abu Beker came to himself, and 


* The story of Jonas and Eudocea has been made the subject of an English 
tragedy by Hughes, entitled The Siege of Damascus; but the lover's name is 
changed to Phocyas, the incidents are altered, and the catastrophe is made entirely 
different. 



274 


MAIIOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


saw what his secretary had written, “God bless thee,” said 
lie, £ ‘ for this foresight!” He then continued to dictate. ‘ ‘ Lis¬ 
ten to him, and obey him, for, as far as I know him, and have 
seen him, he is integrity itself. He is competent to every¬ 
thing he undertakes. He will rule with justice; if not, God, 
who knows all secrets, will reward him according to his 
works. I mean all for the best, but I cannot see into the 
hidden thoughts of men. Farewell. Act uprightly, and the 
blessing of Allah be upon you.” 

He ordered this testament to be sealed with his seal, and 
copies of it to be sent to the principal authorities, civil and 
military. Then, having sent for Omar, he told him of his 
having nominated him as his successor. 

Omar was a stern and simple-minded man; unambitious of 
posts and dignities. “Oh, successor to the apostle of God!” 
said he; “spare me from this burden. I have no need of the 
Caliphat.” “But the Caliphat has need of you!” replied the 
dying Abu Beker. 

He went on to claim his acceptance of the office as a proof 
of friendship to himself, and of devotion to the public good, for 
lie considered him eminently calculated to maintain an undi¬ 
vided rule over the restless people so newly congregated into 
an empire. Having brought him to accept, he gave him much 
dying counsel, and after he had retired, prayed fervently for 
his success, and that the dominion of the faith might be 
strengthened and extended during liis reign. Having thus 
provided for a quiet succession to his office, the good Caliph 
expired in the arms of his daughter Ayesha, in the sixty-fourth 
year of his age, having reigned two years, three months, and 
nine days. At the time of his death his father and mother 
were still living, the former ninety-seven years of age. When 
the ancient Moslem heard of the death of his son, he merely 
said, in scriptural phrase, “The Lord hath given, and the 
Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” 

Abu Beker had four wives; the last had been the widow of 
Jaafar, who fell in the battle of Muta. She bore him two sons 
after his sixtieth year. He does not appear, however, to have 
had the same fondness for the sex as the prophet, notwith¬ 
standing his experience in wedlock. “The women,” he used 
to say, “are all an evil; but the greatest evil of all is, that they 
arc necessary.” 

Abu Beker was universally lamented by his subjects, and he 
deserved their lamentations, for he had been an excellent ruler. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


275 


just, moderate, temperate, frugal, and disinterested. His 
reign was too short to enable him to carry out any extensive 
schemes; but it was signalized by the promptness and ability 
with which, through the aid of the sword, he quelled the wide- 
spreading insurrections on the death of the prophet, and pre¬ 
served the scarcely launched empire of Islam from perfect ship¬ 
wreck. He left behind him a name dear to all true Moslems, 
and an example which, Omar used to say, would be a difficult 
pattern for his successors to imitate. 


CHAPTER XII. 

ELECTION OF OMAR, SECOND CALIPH—KHALED SUPERSEDED IN 
COMMAND BY ABU OBEIDAH—MAGNANIMOUS CONDUCT OF THOSE 
GENERALS—EXPEDITION TO THE CONVENT OF ABYLA. 

The nomination of Omar to the succession was supported by 
Ayesha, and acquiesced in by Ali, who saw that opposition 
would be ineffectual. The election took place on the day of the 
decease of Abu Beker. The character of the new Caliph has 
already, through his deeds, been made known in some measure 
to the reader; yet a sketch of him may not be unacceptable. 
He was now about fifty-three years of age, a tall, dark man, 
with a grave demeanor and a bald head. He was so tall, says 
one of his biographers, that when he sat he was higher than 
those who stood. His strength was uncommon, and he used 
the left as adroitly as the right hand. Though so bitter an 
enemy of Islamism at first as to seek the life of Mahomet, he 
became from the moment of his conversion one of its most sin¬ 
cere and strenuous champions. He had taken an active part 
in the weightiest and most decisive events of the prophet’s ca¬ 
reer. His name stands at the head of the weapon companions 
at Beder, Ohod, Khalbar, Honein, and Tabuc, at the defence of 
Medina, and the capture of Mecca, and indeed lie appears to 
have been the soul of most of the early military enterprises of 
the faith. His zeal was prompt and almost fiery in its opera¬ 
tions. He expounded and enforced the doctrines of Islam like 
a soldier; when a question was too knotty for his logic, he was 
ready to sever it with the sword, and to strike off the head of 
him who persisted in false arguing and unbelief. 

In the administration o£ affairs, his probity and justice were 



276 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


proverbial. In private life ne was noted for abstinence and 
frugality, and a contempt for the false grandeur of the world. 
Water was his only beverage. His food a few dates, or a few 
bits of barley bread and salt; but in time of penance even salt 
was retrenched as a luxury. His austere piety and self-denial, 
and the simplicity and almost poverty of his appearance, were 
regarded with reverence in those primitive days of Islam. He 
had shrewd maxims on which he squared his conduct, of which 
the following is a specimen. “Four things come not back: the 
spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected 
opportunity. ” 

During his reign mosques were erected without number for 
the instruction and devotion of the faithful, and prisons for the 
punishment of delinquents. Pie likewise put in use a scourge 
with twisted thongs for the correction of minor offences, among 
which he included satire and scandal, and so potently and ex¬ 
tensively was it plied that the word went round, “Omar’s 
twisted scourge is more to be feared than his sword.” 

On assuming his office he was saluted as Caliph of the Caliph 
of the apostle of God, in other words, successor to the successor 
of the prophet. Omar objected, that such a title must lengthen 
with every successor, until it became endless; upon which it 
was proposed and agreed that he should receive the title of 
Emir-al-Moumenin, that is to say, Commander of the Faithful. 
This title, altered into Miramamolin, was subsequently borne 
by such Moslem sovereigns as held independent sway, ac¬ 
knowledging no superior, and is equivalent to that of emperor. 

One of the first measures of the new Caliph was with regard 
to the army in Syria. His sober judgment was not to be daz¬ 
zled by daring and brilliant exploits in arms, and he doubted 
the fitness of Khaled for the general command. He acknowl¬ 
edged his valor and military skill, but considered him rash, 
fiery, and prodigal; prone to hazardous and extravagant ad¬ 
venture, and more fitted to be a partisan than a leader. He 
resolved, therefore, to take the principal command of the army 
out of such indiscreet hands, and restore it to Abu Obeidah, 
who, he said, bad proved himself worthy of it by his piety, 
modesty, moderation, and good faith. He accordingly wrote 
on a skin of parchment, a letter to Abu Obeidah, informing 
him of the death of Abu Beker, and his own elevation as Ca¬ 
liph, and appointing him commander-in-chief of the army of 
Syria. 

The letter was delivered to Abu Obeidah at the time that 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


277 


Khaled was absent in pursuit of the caravan of exiles. The 
good Obeidah was surprised, but sorely perplexed by the con¬ 
tents. His own modesty made him unambitious of high com¬ 
mand, and his opinion of the signal valor and brilliant services 
of Khaled made him loath to supersede him, and doubtful 
whether the Caliph would not feel disposed to continue him as 
commander-in-chief when he should hear of his recent success 
at Damascus. He resolved, therefore, to keep for the present 
the contents of the Caliph’s letter to himself; and accordingly 
on Khaled’s return to Damascus continued to treat him as 
commander, and suffered him to write his second letter to Abu 
Beker, giving him an account of his recent pursuit and plun¬ 
dering of the exiles. 

Omar had not been long installed in office when he received 
the first letters of Khaled announcing the capture of Damas¬ 
cus. These tidings occasioned the most extravagant joy at 
Medina, and the valor of Khaled was extolled by the multitude 
to the very skies. In the midst of their rejoicings they ,learnt 
with astonishment that the general command had been trans¬ 
ferred to Abu Obeidah. The admirers of Khaled were loud in 
their expostulations. “What!” cried they, “dismiss Khaled 
when in the full career of victory ? Remember the reply of Abu 
Beker, when a like measure was urged upon him. ' I will not 
sheathe the sword of God drawn for the promotion of the 
faith.’ ” 

Omar revolved their remonstrances in his mind, but his 
resolution remained unchanged. “ Abu Obeidah,” said he, “is 
tender and merciful, yet brave. He will be careful of his peo¬ 
ple, not lavishing their lives in rash adventures and plunder¬ 
ing inroads; nor will he be the less formidable in battle for 
being moderate when victorious.” 

In the mean time came the second dispatches of Khaled, ad¬ 
dressed to Abu Beker, announcing the success of his expedi¬ 
tion in pursuit of the exiles, and requesting his decision of the 
matters in dispute between him and Abu Obeidah. The 
Caliph was perplexed by this letter, which showed that his 
election as Caliph was yet unknown to the army, and that 
Abu Obeidah had not assumed the command. He now wrote 
again to the latter, reiterating his appointment, and deciding 
upon the matters in dispute. He gave it as his opinion that 
Damascus had surrendered on capitulation, and had not been 
taken by tho sword, and directed that the stipulations of the 
covenant should be fulfilled. He declared the pursuit of the 


278 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


exiles iniquitous and rash, and that it would have proved 
fatal, but for the mercy of God. The dismissal of the em¬ 
peror’s daughter free of ransom, he termed a prodigal action, 
as a large sum might have been obtained and given to the 
poor. He counselled Abu Obeidah, of whose mild and humane 
temper he was well aware, not to be too modest and compliant, 
but at the same time not to risk the lives of the faithful in the 
mere hope of plunder. This latter hint was a reproof to 
Khaled. 

Lest this letter should likewise be suppressed through the 
modesty of Abu Obeidah, he dispatched it by an officer of dis¬ 
tinction, Shaded Ibn Aass, whom he appointed his representa¬ 
tive in Syria, with orders to have the letter read in presence 
of the Moslems, and to cause him to be proclaimed Caliph at 
Damascus. 

Shaded made good his journey, and found Khaled in-his 
tent, still acting as commander-in-chief, and the army igno¬ 
rant of the death of Abu Beker. The tidings he brought struck 
every one with astonishment. The first sentiment expressed 
was grief at the death of the good Abu Beker, who was uni¬ 
versally lamented as a father; the second was surprise at the 
deposition of Khaled from the command, in the very midst of 
such signal victories; and many of his officers and soldiers 
were loud in expressing their indignation. 

If Khaled had been fierce and rude in his career of triumph, 
he proved himself magnanimous in this moment of adversity. 
“I know,” said he, “that Omar does not love me; but since 
Abu Beker is dead, and has appointed him his successor, I sub¬ 
mit to his commands.” He accordingly caused Omar to bo 
proclaimed Caliph at Damascus, and resigned his command 
to Abu Obeidah. The latter accepted it with characteristic 
modesty; but evinced a fear that Khaled would retire in dis¬ 
gust, and his signal services be lost to the cause of Islam. 
Khaled, however, Soon let him know that he was as ready to 
serve as to command, and only required an occasion to prove 
that his zeal for the faith was unabated. His personal sub¬ 
mission extorted admiration even from his enemies, and 
gained him the fullest deference, respect, and confidence of 
Abu Obeidah. 

About this time one of the Christian tributaries, a base- 
spirited wretch, eager to ingratiate himself with Abu Obeidah, 
came and informed him of a fair object of enterprise. “ At no 
great distance from this, between Tripoli and Harran, there is 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


279 


d convent called Daiz A bil Kodos, or the monastery of the 
Holy Father, from being inhabited by a Christian hermit, so 
eminent for wisdom, piety, and mortification of the flesh, that 
he is looked up to as a saint; so that young and old, rich and 
poor, resort from all parts to seek his advice and blessing, and 
not a marriage takes place among the nobles of the country, 
but the bride and bridegroom repair to receive from him the 
nuptial benediction. At Easter there is an annual fair held at 
Abyla in front of the convent, to which are brought the rich¬ 
est manufactures of the surrounding country; silken stuffs, 
jewels of gold and silver, and other precious productions of 
art; and as the fair is a peaceful congregation of people un¬ 
armed and unguarded, it will afford ample booty at little risk 
or trouble.” 

Abu Obeidah announced the intelligence to his troops. 
“Who,” said he, “will undertake this enterprise?” His eye 
glanced involuntarily upon Khaled; it was just such a foray 
as he was wont to delight in; but Khaled remained silent. 
Abu Obeidah could not ask a service from one so lately in 
chief command; and while he hesitated, Abdallah Ibn Jaafar, 
stepson of Abu Beker, came forward. A banner was given 
him, and five hundred veteran horsemen, scarred in many a 
battle, sallied with him from the gates of Damascus, guided by 
the traitor Christian. They halted to rest before arriving at 
Abyla, and sent forward the Christian as a scout. As he ap¬ 
proached the place he was astonished to see it crowded with an 
immense concourse of Greeks, Armenians, Copts, and Jews, in 
their various garbs; besides these there was a grand proces¬ 
sion of nobles and courtiers in rich attire, and priests in re¬ 
ligious dresses, with a guard of five thousand horse; all, as he 
learned, escorting the daughter of the prefect of Tripoli, who 
was lately married, and had come with her husband to receive 
the blessing of the venerable hermit. The Christian scout 
hastened back to the Moslems, and warned them to retreat. 

“ I dare not,” said Abdallah promptly; “ I fear the wrath of 
Allah, should I turn my back. I will fight these infidels. 
Those who help me, God will reward; those whose hearts fail 
them are welcome to retire.” Not a Moslem turned his back. 

“ Forward!” said Abdallah tf) the Christian, and thou shalt be¬ 
hold what the companions of the prophet can perform.” The 
traitor hesitated, however, and was with difficulty persuaded 
to guide them on a service of such peril. 

Abdallah led his band near to Abyla, where they lay close 


280 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS .* 


until morning. At the dawn of day, having performed the 
customary prayer, he divided his host into five squadrons of a 
hundred each; they were to charge at once in five different 
places, with the shout of Allah Achbar! and to slay or capture 
without stopping to pillage until the victory should be com¬ 
plete. He then reconnoitred the place. The hermit was 
preaching in front of his convent to a multitude of auditors; 
the fair teemed with people in the variegated garbs of th® 
Orient. One house was guarded by a great number of horse¬ 
men, and numbers of persons, richly clad, were going in and 
out, or standing about it. In this house evidently was the 
youthful bride. 

Abdallah encouraged his followers to despise the number of 
the^e foes. “Remember,” cried he, “ the words of the pro¬ 
phet. ‘ Paradise is under the shadow of swords! ’ If we con¬ 
quer, we shall have glorious booty; if we fall, paradise awaits 
us!” 

The five squadrons charged as they had been ordered, with 
the well-known war-cry. The Christians were struck with dis¬ 
may, thinking the whole Moslem army upon them. There was 
a direful confusion; the multitude flying in all directions; 
women and children shrieking and crying; booths and tents 
overturned, and precious merchandise scattered about the 
streets. The troops, however, seeing the inferior number of 
the assailants, plucked up spirits and charged upon them. 
The merchants and inhabitants recovered from their panic and 
flew to arms, and the Moslem band, hemmed in among such a 
host of foes, seemed, say the Arabian writers, like a white 
spot on the hide of a black camel. A Moslem trooper, seeing 
the peril of his companions, broke his way out of the throng, 
and, throwing the reins on the neck of his steed, scoured back 
to Damascus for succor. 

In this moment of emergency Abu Obeidah forgot all scru¬ 
ples of delicacy, and turned to the man he had superseded in 
office. “Fail us not,” cried he, “in this moment of peril; 
but, for God’s sake, hasten to deliver thy brethren from de¬ 
struction.” 

“Had Omar given the command of the army to a child,” re¬ 
plied the gracious Khaled, “I should have obeyed him; how 
much more thee, my predecessor in the faith of Islam!” 

He now arrayed himself in a coat of mail, the spoil of the 
false prophet Moseilma; he put on a helmet of proof, and over 
it a skull-cap, which he called the blessed cap, and attributed 


* MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


281 

fco it wonderful virtues, having received the prophet’s benedic¬ 
tion. Then springing on his horse, and putting himself at the 
head of a chosen band, he scoured off toward Abyla, with the 
bold Derar at his side. 

In the mean time the troops under Abdallah had maintained 
throughout the day a desperate conflict; heaps of the slain tes¬ 
tified their prowess; but their ranks were sadly thinned, scarce 
one of the survivors but had received repeated wounds, and 
they were ready to sink under heat, fatigue and thirst. To¬ 
ward sunset a cloud of dust is seen: is it a reinforcement of 
their enemies? A troop of horsemen emerge. They bear the 
black eagle of Khaled. The air resounds with the shout of 
Allah Achbar. The Christians are assailed on either side; 
some fly and are pursued to the river by the unsparing sword 
of Khaled; others rally round the monastery. Derar engages 
hand to hand with the prefect of Tripoli; they grapple; they 
struggle; they fall to the earth; Derar is uppermost, and, 
drawing a poniard, plunges it into the heart of his adversary. 
He springs upon his feet; vaults into the saddle of the prefect’s 
horse, and, with the shout of Allah Achbar, gallops in quest of 
new opponents. 

The battle is over. The fair is given up to plunder. Horses, 
mules, and asses are laden with silken stuffs, rich embroidery, 
jewels of gold ajid silver, precious stones, spices, perfumes, and 
other wealthy plunder of the merchants; but the most precious 
part of the spoil is the beautiful bride, with forty damsels, who 
formed her bridal train. 

The monastery was left desolate, with none but the holy an¬ 
chorite to inhabit it. Khaled called upon the old man, but re¬ 
ceived no answer; he called again, but the only reply was to 
invoke the vengeance of heaven upon his head for the Chris¬ 
tian blood he had spilt. The fierce Saracen paused as he was 
driving off the spoil, and laying his hand upon the hilt of his 
scimetar, looked backed grimly upon the hermit. “ What we 
have done,” said he, “is in obedience to the law of God, who 
commands us to slay all unbelievers; and had not the apostle 
of God commanded us to let such men as thee alone, thou 
shouldst have shared the fate of thy fellow-infidels.” 

The old man saw his danger in time, and discreetly held his 
peace, and the sword of Islam remained within its scabbard. 

The conquerors bore their booty and their captives back in 
triumph to Damascus. One fifth of the spoil was set apart for 
the public treasury : the rest was distributed among the sob 


282 


MA110ME : AND HIS SUCGESSOES. * 


diery. Derar, as a trophy of his exploit, received the horse oi 
the prefect of Tripoli, but he made it a present to his Amazo¬ 
nian sister Caulah. The saddle and trappings were studded 
with precious stones; these she picked out and distributed 
among her female companions. 

Among the spoils was a cloth curiously wrought with a like¬ 
ness of the blessed Saviour; which, from the exquisite workman¬ 
ship or the sanctity of the portrait, was afterwards sold in, 
Arabia Felix for ten times its weight in gold. 

Abdallah, for his part of the spoil, asked for the daughter of 
the prefect, having been smitten with her charms. His do-, 
mand was referred to the Caliph Omar and granted, and the 
captive beauty lived with him many years. Obeidah, in his 
letters to the Caliph, generously set forth the magnanimous 
conduct and distinguished prowess of Khaled on this occasion, 
and entreated Omar to write a letter to that general expressive 
of his sense of his recent services, as it might soothe the mortifi¬ 
cation he must experience from his late deposition. The Caliph, 
however, though he replied to every other part of the letter of 
Obeidah, took no notice, either by word or deed, of that relat¬ 
ing to Khaled, from which it was evident that, in secret, he en¬ 
tertained no great regard for the unsparing sword of Islam. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

MODERATE MEASURES OF ABU OBEIDAH—REPROVED BY THE 
CALirH FOR HIS SLOWNESS. 

The alertness and hardihood of the Saracens in their rapid 
campaigns have been attributed to their simple and abstemious 
habits. They knew nothing of the luxuries of the pampered 
Greeks, and were prohibited the use of wine. Their drink was 
water, their food principally milk, rice, and the fruits of the 
earth, and their dress the coarse raiments of the desert. An 
army of such men was easily sustained; marched rapidly from 
place to place; and was fitted to cope with the vicissitudes of 
war. The interval of repose, however, in the luxurious city 
of Damascus, and the general abundance of the fertile regions 
of Syria, began to have their effect upon the Moslem troops, and 
the good Abu Obeidah was especially scandalized at discover- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


283 


ing that they were lapsing into the use of wine, so strongly 
forbidden by the prophet. He mentioned the prevalence of 
this grievous sin in his letter to the Caliph, who read it in the 
mosque in presence of his officers. “By Allah,” exclaimed 
the abstemious Omar; “these fellows are only fit for poverty 
and hard fare; what is to be done with these wine-bibbers?” 

“Let him who drinks wine,” replied Ali, promptly, “receive 
twenty bastinadoes on the soles of his feet.” 

“ Good, it shall be so,” rejoined the Caliph; and he wrote to 
that effect to the commander-in-chief. On receiving the letter, 
Abu Obeidah forthwith summoned the offenders, and had the 
punishment publicly inflicted for the edification of his troops; he 
took the occasion to descant on the enormity of the offence, and 
to exhort such as had sinned in private to come forward like 
good Moslems, make public confession, and submit to the bas¬ 
tinado in token of repentance; whereupon many, who had in¬ 
dulged in secret potations, moved by his paternal exhortation, 
avowed their crime and their repentance, and were set at ease 
in their consciences by a sound bastinadoing and the forgive¬ 
ness of the good Abu Obeidah. 

That worthy commander now left a garrison of five hundred 
horse at Damascus, and issued forth with his host to prosecute 
the subjugation of Syria. He had a rich field of enterprise 
before him. The country of Syria, from the amenity of its 
climate, tempered by the vicinity of the sea and the moun¬ 
tains, from the fertility of its soil, and the happy distribution 
of woods and streams, was peculiarly adapted for the vigor¬ 
ous support and prolific increase of animal life; it accordingly 
teemed with population, and was studded with ancient and 
embattled cities and fortresses. Two of the proudest and most 
splendid of these were Emessa (the modern Hems), the capital 
of the plains; and Baalbec, the famous city of the Sun, situated 
between the mountains of Lebanon. 

These two cities, with others intermediate, were the objects 
of.Abu Obeidah’s enterprise, and he sent Khaled in advance, 
with Derar and Rafi Ibn Omeirah, at the head of a third of the 
army, to scour the country about Emessa. In his own slower 
march, with the main body of the army, he approached the 
city of Jusheyah, but was met by the governor, who purchased 
a year’s truce with the payment of four hundred pieces of gold 
and fifty silken robes; and the promise to surrender the city 
at the expiration of a year, if in that interval Baalbec and 
Emessa should have been taken. 


284 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


When Abu Obeidah came before Emessa he found Ehaled ia 
active operation. The governor of the place had died on the 
day on which the Moslem force appeared, and the city was not 
fully provisioned for a siege. The inhabitants negotiated a 
truce for one year by the payment of ten thousand pieces of 
gold and two hundred suits of silk, with the engagement to 
surrender at the end of that term, provided he should have 
taken Aleppo, Alhadir, and Kennesrin, and defeated the army 
of the emperor. Khaled would have persevered in the siege, 
but Abu Obeidah thought it the wisest policy to agree to 
these golden terms, by which he provided himself with the 
sinews of war, and was enabled to proceed more surely in his 
career. 

The moment the treaty was concluded the people of Emessa 
threw open their gates; held a market or fair beneath the 
walls, and began to drive a lucrative trade; for the Moslem 
camp was full of booty, and these marauding warriors, flushed 
with sudden wealth, squandered plunder of all kinds, and never 
regarded the price of anything that struck their fancy. In the 
mean time predatory bands foraged the country both far and 
near, and came in driving sheep and cattle, and horses and 
camels, laden with household booty of all kinds, besides multi¬ 
tudes of captives. The piteous lamentations of these people, 
torn from their peaceful homes and doomed to slavery, touched 
the heart of Abu Obeidah. He told them that all who would 
embrace the Islam faith should have their lives and property. 
On such as chose to remain in infidelity, he imposed a ransom 
of five pieces of gold a head, besides an annual tribute; caused 
their names and places of abode to be registered in a book, and 
then gave them back their property, their wives and children, 
on condition that they should act as guides and interpreters to 
the Moslems in case of need. 

The merciful policy of the good Abu Obeidah promised to 
promote the success of Islam, even more potently than the 
sword. The Syrian Greeks came in, in great numbers, to have 
their names enregistered in the book of tributaries; and other 
cities capitulated for a year’s truce on the terms granted to 
Emessa. Khaled, however, who was no friend to truces and 
negotiations, murmured at these peaceful measures, and 
offered to take these cities in less time than it required to treat 
with them; but Abu Obeidah was not to be swerved from the 
path of moderation; thus, in a little time the whole territories 
of Emessa, Alhadir, and Kennesrin were rendered sacred from 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 


285 


maraud. The predatory warriors of the desert were some- 
what impatient at being thus hemmed in by prohibited boun 
daries, and on one occasion had well nigh brought the truce 
to an abrupt termination. A party of Saracen troopers, in 
prowling along the confines of Kennesrin, came to where the 
Christians, to mark their boundary, had erected a statue of 
the emperor Heraclius, seated on his throne. The troopers, 
who had a Moslem hatred of images,, regarded this with de¬ 
rision, and amused themselves with careering round and tilt¬ 
ing at it, until one of them, either accidentally or in sport, 
struck out one of the eyes with hjs lance. 

The Greeks were indignant at this outrage Messengers were 
sent to Abu Obeidah, loudly complaining of it as an intentional 
breach of the truce, and a flagrant insult to the emperor. Abu 
Obeidah mildly assured them that it was his disposition most 
rigorously to observe the truce; that the injury to the statue 
must have been accidental, and that no indignity to the 
emperor could have been intended. His moderation only in¬ 
creased the arrogance of the ambassadors; their emperor had 
been insulted; it was for the Caliph to give redress according 
to the measure of the law: “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
tooth.” “What!” cried some of the over-zealous Moslems; 
“ do the infidels mean to claim an eye from the Caliph?” In 
their rage they would have slain the messengers on the spot; 
but the quiet Abu Obeidah stayed them wrath. “ They speak 
bvt figuratively,” said he; then taking the messengers aside, 
he shrewdly compromised the matter, and satisfied their 
wounded loyalty, by agreeing that they should set up a statue 
of the Caliph, with glass eyes, and strike out one of them in 
retaliation. 

While Abu Obeidah was pursuing this moderate course, and 
subduing the country by clemency rather than by force of 
arms, missives came from the Caliph, who was astonished at 
receiving no tidings of further conquests, reproaching him 
with his slowness, and with preferring worldly gain to the 
pious exercise of the sword. The soldiers when they heard of 
the purport of this letter, took the reproaches to themselves, 
and wept with vexation. Abu Obeidah himself was stung ta 
the quick and repented him of the judicious truces he had 
made. In the excitement of the moment he held a council of 
war, and it was determined to lose not a day, although the 
truces had but about a month to run. He accordingly left 
Khaled with a strong force in the vicinity of Emessa to await 


286 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the expiration of the trace, while he marched with the main 
host against the city of Baalbec. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF BAALBEC. 

Baalbec, so called from Baal, the Syrian appellation of the 
sun, or Apollo, to which deity it was dedicated, was one of 
the proudest cities of ancient Syria. It was the metropolis of 
the great and fertile valley of Bekaa, lying between the moun¬ 
tains of Lebanon, and anti-Lebanon. During the Grecian 
domination it was called Heliopolis, which likewise means the 
City of the Sun. It was famous for its magnificent temple of 
Baal, which, tradition affirms, was built by Solomon the Wise, 
to please one of his wives, a native of Sidon and a worshipper 
of the Sun. The immense blocks of stone of which it was 
constructed were said to have been brought by the genii, over 
whom Solomon had control by virtue of his talismanic seal. 
Some of them remain to this day objects of admiration to the 
traveller, and perplexity to the modern engineer.* 

On his march against Baalbec Abu Obeidah intercepted a 
caravan of four hundred camels laden with silk and sugars, 
on the way to that city. With his usual clemency he allowed 
the captives to ransom themselves; some of whom carried to 
Baalbec the news of his approach, and of the capture of the 
caravan. Herbis, the governor, supposing the Saracens to be 
a mere marauding party, sallied forth with six thousand horse 
and a multitude of irregular foot, in hope to recover the spoils, 
but found to his cost that he had an army to contend with, 
and was driven back to the city with great loss, after receiv¬ 
ing seven wounds. 

Abu Obeidah set himself down before the city, and ad¬ 
dressed a letter to the inhabitants, reminding them of the 
.invincible arms of the faithful, and inviting them to profess 
Islamism, or pay tribute. This letter he gave in charge to a 
Syrian peasant; and with it a reward of twenty pieces of 
silver; “for Allah forbid,” said the conscientious general, 


* Among these huge blocks some measure fifty-eight, and one sixty-nine feet in 
length. 




MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 287 

"that I should employ thee without pay. The laborer is 
worthy of his hire.” 

The messenger was drawn up by a cord to the battlements, 
and delivered the letter to the inhabitants, many of whom, on 
hearing the contents, were inclined to surrender. Herbis, the 
governor, however, who was still smarting with his wounds, 
tore the letter in pieces, and dismissed the messenger without* 
deigning a reply. 

Abu Obeidah now ordered his troops to the assault, but the 
garrison made brave defence, and did such execution with 
their engines from the walls, that the Saracens were repulsed 
with considerable loss. The weather was cold; so Abu 
Obeidah, who was ever mindful of the welfare of his men, 
sent a trumpeter round the camp next morning, forbidding 
any man to take the field until he had made a comfortable 
meal. All were now busy cooking, when, in the midst of their 
preparations, the city gates were thrown open, and the Greeks 
came scouring upon them, making great slaughter. They 
were repulsed with some difficulty, but carried off prisoners 
and plunder. 

Abu Obeidah now removed his camp out of reach of the 
engines, and where his cavalry would have more room. 
He threw out detachments also, to distract the attention 
of the enemy and oblige them to fight in several places. 
Saad Ibn Zeid, with five hundred horse and three hundred 
foot, was to show himself in the valley opposite the gate look¬ 
ing toward the mountains; while Derar, with three hundred 
horse and two hundred foot, was stationed in front of the gate 
on the side toward Damascus. 

Herbis, the governor, seeing the Saracens move back their 
tents, supposed them to be intimidated by their late loss. 
“These Arabs,” said he, “are half-naked vagabonds of the 
desert, who fight without object; we are locked up in steel, 
and fight for our wives and children, our property and our 
lives.” He accordingly roused his troops to make another 
sally, and an obstinate battle ensued. One of the Moslem 
officers, Sohail Ibn Sabah, being disabled by a sabre cut in 
the right arm, alighted from his horse, and clambered a 
neighboring hill which overlooked the field, the city, and its 
vicinity. Here he sat watching the various fortunes of the 
field. The sally had been made through the gate before which 
Abu Obeidah was posted, who of course received the whole 
brunt of the attack. The battle was hot, and Sohail perceived 


288 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


from his hill that the Moslems in this quarter were hard 
pressed, and that the general was giving ground, and in 
imminent danger of being routed; while Derar and Saad re¬ 
mained inactive at their distant posts; no sally having been 
made from the gates before which they were stationed. Upon 
£his Solmil gathered together some green branches, and set 
fire.to them, so as to make a column of smoke; a customary 
signal by day among the Arabs, as fire was by night. Derar 
and Saad beheld the smoke and galloped with their troops in 
that direction. Their arrival changed the whole fortune of 
the field. Herbis, who had thought himself on the eve of 
victory, now found himself beset on each side and cut off from 
the city! Nothing but strict discipline and the impenetrable 
Grecian phalanx saved him. His men closed shield to shield, 
their lances in advance, and made a slow and defensive retreat, 
the Moslems wheeling around and charging incessantly upon 
them. Abu Obeidah, who knew nothing of the arrival of 
Derar and Saad, imagined the retreat of the Christians a mere 
feint, and called ba^k his troops; Saad, however, who heard 
not the general’s order, kept on in pursuit, until he drove the 
enemy to the top of a hill, where they ensconced themselves 
in an old deserted monastery. 

When Abu Obeidah learned the secret of this most timely 
aid, and that it was in consequence of a supposed signal from 
him, he acknowledged that the smoke was an apt thought, and 
saved his camp from being sacked; but he prohibited any man 
from repeating such an act without orders from the general. 

In the mean time Herbis, the governor, finding the small 
number that invested the convent, sallied forth with his 
troops, in hopes of cutting his way to the city. Never did 
men fight more valiantly, and they had already made great 
havoc, when the arrival of a fresh swarm of Moslems drove 
them back to their forlorn fortress, where they were so closely 
watched that not a Grecian eye could peer from the old walls 
without being the aim of a Moslem arrow. 

Abu Obeidah now invested the city more closely than ever, 
leaving Saad, with his forces, to keep the governor encaged in 
the monastery. The latter perceived it would be impossible 
to hold out longer in this shattered edifice, destitute of pro¬ 
visions. His proud spirit was completely broken, and, throw¬ 
ing off his silken robes, and clothing him in a worn woollen 
garb, as suited to his humble situation, he sought a conference 
with Saad to treat on terms of capitulation. The Moslem 





MAHOMET AND JIIS SUCCESSORS. 


289 


captain replied that he could only treat for the party in the 
convent, whom he would receive as brothers, if they would 
acknowledge God and the prophet, or would let them free on 
the pledge not to bear arms against the Moslems. He prof¬ 
fered to lead Herbis to the general, if he wished to treat for 
the city also; and added that, should the negotiation fail, he 
and his Greeks might return into their convent, and let God 
and the sword decide. 

Herbis was accordingly led through the besieging camp into 
the presence of Abu Obeidah, and gnawed his lip when he saw 
the inconsiderable number of the Moslem host. He offered, as 
a ransom for the city, one thousand ounces of gold, two thou¬ 
sand of silver, and one thousand silken robes; but Abu Obei- 
dah demanded that he should double the amount, and add 
thereto one thousand sabres, and all the arms of the soldiers 
in the monastery; as well as engage in behalf of the city to 
pay an annual tribute; to engage to erect no more Christian 
churches, nor ever more act in hostility against the Moslem 
power. 

These harsh terms being conceded, Herbis was permitted to 
enter the city alone, and submit them to the inhabitants, all 
his attendants being detained as hostages. The townsmen at 
first refused to capitulate, saying their city was the strongest 
in all Syria; but Herbis offered to pay down one fourth of the 
ransom himself, and they at length complied. One point was 
conceded to the people of Baal bee to soothe their wounded 
pride. It was agreed that Rafi Ibn Abdallah, who was to 
remain with five hundred men, acting as lieutenant of Baalbec 
for Abu Obeidah, should encamp without the walls, and not 
enter the city. These matters being arranged, Abu Obeidah 
marched with his host on other enterprises. 

The Saracen troops, under Rafi Ibn Abdallah, soon ingrati¬ 
ated themselves with the people of Baalbec. They pillaged the 
surrounding country, and sold their booty for low prices to the 
townsfolk, who thus grew wealthy on the spoils of their own 
countrymen. Herbis, the governor, felt a desire to participate 
in these profits. He reminded his fellow-citizens how much 
he had paid for their ransom, and what good terms he had 
effected for them; and then proposed that he should have one 
tenth of what they gained in traffic with the Moslems to reim¬ 
burse him. They consented, though with extreme reluctance. 
In a few days he found the gain so sweet that he thirsted for 
more; he therefore told them that his reimbursement would 


290 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS.. 


be tedious at this rate, and proposed to receive one fourth. 
The people, enraged at his cupidity, rushed on him with furi¬ 
ous outcries, and killed him on the spot. The noise of the 
tumult reached the camp of Rafi Ibn Abdallah, and a deputa¬ 
tion of the inhabitants coming forth, entreated him to enter 
the city and govern it himself. He scrupled to depart from 
the terms of the treaty until he had written to Abu Obeidah; 
but on receiving permission from the general, he entered and 
took command. Thus did the famous Baalbec, the ancient 
Heliopolis, or City of the Bun, fall under the Saracen sway on 
the 20th of January, a.d. 636, being the fifteenth year of the 
Hegira. 


CHAPTER XV. 

SIEGE OF EMESSA—STRATAGEMS OF THE MOSLEMS—FANATIC DE¬ 
VOTION OF IKREMAH—SURRENDER OF THE CITY. 

The year’s truce with the city of Emessa having now 
expired, Abu Obeidah appeared before that place, and sum¬ 
moned it in the following form: 

“ In the name of the most merciful Ood. Abu Obeidah Ibn 
Aljerah, general of the armies of the Commander of the Faith¬ 
ful, Omar al Khattab, to the people of Emessa. Let not the 
loftiness of your walls, the strength of your bulwarks, nor 
the robustness of your bodies, lead you into error. Allah hath 
conquered stronger places through the means of his servants. 
Your city would be of no more consideration against us than 
a kettle of pottage set in the midst of our camp. 

“I invite you to embrace our holy faith, and the law re¬ 
vealed to our prophet Mahomet; and we will send pious men 
to instruct you, and you shall participate in all our fortunes. 

“ If you refuse, you shall still be left in possession of all your 
property on the payment of annual tribute. If you reject 
both conditions, come forth from behind your stone walls, and 
let Allah, the supreme judge, decide between us.” 

This summons was treated with scorn; and the garrison 
made a bold sally, and handled their besiegers so roughly that 
they were glad when night put an end to the conflict. In the 
evening a crafty old Arab sought the tent of Abu Obeidah; ho 
represented the strength of the place, the intrepidity of the 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 291 

soldiers, and the ample stock of provisions, which would ena¬ 
ble it to stand a weary siege. He suggested a stratagem, how¬ 
ever, by which it might be reduced; mid Abu Obeidah adopted 
his counsel. Sending a messenger into the city, he offered to 
the inhabitants to strike his tents, and lead his troops to the 
attack of other places, provided they would furnish him pro¬ 
visions for five days’ march. His offer was promptly accepted, 
and the provisions were furnished. Abu Obeidah now pre¬ 
tended that, as his march would be long, a greater supply 
would be necessary: he continued to buy, therefore, as long as 
the Christians had provisions to sell, and in this manner ex¬ 
hausted their magazines; and as the scouts from other cities 
beheld the people of Emessa throw open their gates and bring 
forth provisions, it became rumored throughout the country 
that the city had surrendered. 

Abu Obeidah, according to promise, led his host against 
other places. The first was Arrestan, a fortified city, w^ell wat¬ 
ered, provisioned, and garrisoned. His summons being re¬ 
peated, and rejected, he requested the governor of the place to 
let him leave there twenty chests of cumbrous articles, which 
impeded him in his movements. The request was granted 
with great pleasure at getting clear so readily of such maraud¬ 
ers. The twenty chests, secured with padlocks, were taken 
into the citadel, but every chest had a sliding bottom, and con¬ 
tained an armed man. Among the picked warriors thus con¬ 
cealed were Derar, Abdalrahman, and Abdallah Ibn Jaafar; 
while Khaled with a number of troops was placed in ambush 
to co-operate with those in the chests. 

The Moslem host departed. The Christians went to church 
to return thanks for their deliverance, and the sounds of their 
hymns of triumph reached the ears of Derar and his comrades. 
Upon this they issued forth from their chests, seized the wife 
of the governor, and obtained from her the keys of the gates. 
Abdallah, with fourteen men, hastened to the church and 
closed the doors upon the congregation; while Derar, with 
four companions, threw open the gates with the cry of Allah 
Achbar; upon which Khaled and his forces rushed from their 
ambuscade, and the city was taken almost without bloodshed. 

The city of Shaizar was next assailed, and capitulated on 
favorable terms; and now Abu Obeidah returned before 
Emessa, and once more summoned it to surrender. The gov¬ 
ernor remonstrated loudly, reminding the Moslem general of 
his treaty, by which he engaged to depart from Emessa and 


292 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


carry the war against other places. “I engaged to depart,'’ 
replied Abu Obeidah, “but I did not engage not to return. I 
have carried the war against other places, and have subdued 
Arrestan and Shaizar. ” 

The people of Emessa now perceived how they had been cir¬ 
cumvented. Their magazines had been drained of provisions, 
and they had not wherewithal to maintain them against a 
siegff. The governor, however, encouraged them to try the 
chance of a battle as before. They prepared for the fight by 
prayers in the churches; and the governor took the sacrament 
in the church of St. George; but he sought to enhearten him¬ 
self by grosser means, for we are told he ate the whole of a 
roasted kid for his supper, and caroused on wine until the 
crowing of the cock. In the morning, early, he arrayed him¬ 
self in rich apparel, and sallied forth at the head of five thou¬ 
sand horsemen, all men of strength and courage, and well 
armed. They charged the besiegers so bravely, and their 
archers so galled them from the walls, that the Moslem force 
gave way. 

Khaled now threw himself in front of the battle, and enacted 
wondrous feats to rally his soldiers and restore the fight. In 
an encounter, hand to hand, with a Greek horseman, his 
seimetar broke, and he was weaponless, but closing with his 
adversary, he clasped him in his arms, crushed his ribs, and 
drawing him from his saddle threw him dead to the earth. 
The imminent peril of the fight roused a frantic valor in the 
Moslems. In the heat of enthusiasm Ikremah, a youthful 
cousin of Khaled, galloped about the field, fighting with reck¬ 
less fury, and raving about the joys of paradise promised to all 
true believers who fell in the battles of the faith. “I see,” 
cried he, “the black-eyed Houris of Paradise. One of them, if 
seen on earth, would make mankind die of love. They are 
smiling on us. One of them waves a handkerchief of green 
silk and holds a cup of precious stones. She beckons me; 
come hither quickly, she cries, my well beloved!” In this way 
he went, shouting A1 Jennah! A1 Jennah! Paradise! Paradise! 
charging into the thickest of the Christians, and making fear¬ 
ful havoc, until he reached the place where the governor was 
fighting, who sent a javelin through his heart, and dispatched 
him in quest of his vaunted Elysium. 

Night alone parted the hosts, and the Moslems retired ex¬ 
hausted to their tents, glad to repose from so rude a fight. 
Even Khaled counselled Abu Obeidah to have recourse to 


MAHOMET AND IMS SUCCESSORS. 


293 


stratagem, and make a pretended fight the next morning; to 
draw the Greeks, confident through this day’s success, into 
disorder: for while collected their phalanx presented an im¬ 
penetrable wall to the Moslem horsemen. 

Accordingly, at the dawning of the day, the Moslems re¬ 
treated: at first with a show of order: then with a feigned 
confusion, for it was an Arab stratagem of war to scatter and 
rally again in the twinkling of an eye. The Christians, think¬ 
ing their flight unfeigned, broke up their steady phalanx, some 
making headlong pursuit, while others dispersed to plunder 
the Moslem camp. 

Suddenly the Moslems faced about, sursoufided the confused 
mass of Christians, and fell upon it, as the Arabian historian 
says, “like eagles upon a carcass.” Khaled and Derar and 
other chiefs spirited them on with shouts of Allah Achbar, and 
a terrible rout and slaughter ensued. The number of Christian 
corpses on that field exceeded sixteen hundred. The governor 
was recognized among the slain by his enormous bulk, his 
bloated face, and his costly apparel, fragrant with perfumes. 

The city of Emessa surrendered as a sequel to that fight, but 
the Moslems could neither stay to take possession nor afford to 
leave a garrison. Tidings had reached them of the approach 
of an immensf army, composed of the heavily armed Grecian 
soldiery and the light troops of the desert, that threatened 
completely to overwhelm them. Various and contradictory 
were the counsels in this moment of agitation and alarm. 
Some advised that they should hasten back to their native 
deserts, where they would be reinforced by their friends, and 
where the hostile army could not find sustenance; but Abu 
Obeidah objected that such a retreat would be attributed to 
cowardice. Others cast a wistful eye upon the stately dwell¬ 
ings, the delightful gardens, the fertile fields, and green 
pastures, which they had just won by the sword, and chose 
rather to stay and fight for this land of pleasure and abun¬ 
dance than return to famine and the desert. Khaled decided 
the question. It would not do to linger there, he shid; Constan¬ 
tine, the emperor’s son, being not far off, at Caesarea, with 
forty thousand men; he advised, therefore, that they should 
march to Yermouk, on the borders of Palestine and Arabia., 
where they would be within reach of assistance from the Caliph, 
and might await, with confidence, the attack of the imperial 
army. The advice of Khaled was adopted. 


294 


MAHOMET AND 1IIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XVI 

ADVANCE OF A POWERFUL IMPERIAL ARMY—SKIRMISHES OF 

KHALED—CAPTURE OF DERAR—INTERVIEW OF KHxVLED AND 

MANUEL. 

The rapid conquests of the Saracens had alarmed the emperor 
Heraclius for the safety of his rich province of Syria. Troops 
had been levied both in Europe and Asia, and transported, by 
sea and land, to various parts of the invaded country. The 
main body, consisting of eighty thousand men, advanced to 
seek the Moslem host, under the command of a distinguished 
general, called Mahan by the Arabian writers, and Manuel by 
the Greeks. On its way the imperial army was joined by 
Jabalah Ibn al Aynham, chief or king of the Christian tribe of 
Gassan. This Jabalah had professed the Mahometan faith, but 
had apostatized in consequence of the following circumstance: 
He had accompanied the Caliph Omar on a pilgrimage to 
Mecca, and was performing the religious ceremony of the 
Towali, or sacred walk seven times round the Caaba, when an 
Arab of the tribe of Fezarah accidentally trod on the skirt of 
his Ihram or pilgrim scarf, so as to draw it from his shoulders. 
Turning fiercely upon the Arab, “Woe be unto thee,” cried he, 
“for uncovering my back in the sacred house of God.” The 
pilgrim protested it was an accident, but Jabalah buffeted him 
in the face, bruising him sorely, and beating out four of his 
teeth. The pilgrim complained to Omar, but Jabalah justified 
himself, stating the indignity he had suffered. “Had it not 
been for my reverence for the Caaba, and for the prohibition 
to shed blood within the sacred city, I would have slain the 
offender on the spot.” “Thou hast confessed thy fault,” said 
Omar, “and unless forgiven by thy adversary, must submit to 
the law of retaliation, ‘ an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
tooth.’” “I am a king,” replied Jabalah, proudly, “and he is 
but a peasant.” “Ye are both Moslems,” rejoined Omar, 
“and in the sight of Allah, who is no respecter of persons, ye 
are equal.” The utmost that Jabalah could obtain from the 
rigid justice of Omar was, that the execution of the sentence 
might be postponed until the next day. In the night he made 
his escape and fled to Constantinople, where he abjured Islam- 
ism, resumed the Christian faith, and went over to the service 
of the emperor Heraclius. He had now brought sixty thousand 


MAHOMET AND RIS SUCCESSORS. 


295 


Arabs to the aid of Manuel. Such was the powerful host, the 
approach of which had compelled the Moslems to abandon 
Emessa on the very moment of surrender. They had marched 
to Yermouk, a place noted for its pleasant groves and the 
sweet salubrity of its air, and lay encamped on the banks of a 
little stream of the same name, heretofore obscure, but now 
destined to become famous by a battle decisive of the fate of 
Syria. 

Manuel advanced slowly and deliberately with his heavily 
armed Grecian soldiery; but he sent Jabalah in the 
to scour the country with his light Arab troops, as be&c fed 
to cope with the skirmishing warriors of the desert; thus, as 
he said, “using diamond to cut diamond.” The course of these 
combined armies was marked with waste, rapine, and outrage, 
and they inflicted all kinds of injuries and indignities on those 
Christian places which had made treaties with or surrendered 
to the Moslems. 

While Manuel with his main army was yet at a distance, he 
sent proposals of peace to Abu Obeidah, according to the com¬ 
mands of the emperor. His proposals w r ere rejected; but Obei¬ 
dah sent several messengers to Jabalah, reproaching him with 
his apostasy, and his warfare against his countrymen, and en¬ 
deavoring to persuade him to remain neutral in the impending 
battle. Jabalah replied, however, that his faith was commit¬ 
ted to the emperor, and he was resolved to fight in his cause. 

Upon this Khaled came forward, and offered to take this 
apostate in his own hands. ‘ He is far in the advance of the 
main army,” said he; “let me have a small body of picked 
men chosen by myself, and I will fall upon him and his infidel 
Arabs before Manuel can come up to their assistance.” 

His proposal was condemned by many as rash and extrava¬ 
gant. “By no means,” cried Khaled, with zealous zeal; “this 
infidel force is the army of the devil, and can do nothing 
against the army of Allah, who will assist us with his angels. 

So pious an argument was unanswerable. Khaled was per¬ 
mitted to choose his men, all well-seasoned warriors whose 
valor he had proved. With them he fell upon Jabalah, who 
was totally unprepared for so hare-brained an assault, threw 
his host into complete confusion, and obliged him, after much 
slaughter, to retreat upon the main body. The triumph of 
Khaled, however, was damped by the loss of several valiant 
officers, among whom were Yezed, Rafi, and Derar, who were 
borne off captives by the retreating Christians. 


296 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


In the mean time a special messenger, named Abdallah Ibn 
Kort, arrived at Medina, bringing letters to the Caliph from 
Abn Qbeidah, describing the perilous situation of the Moslem 
army, and entreating reinforcements. The Caliph ascended 
the pulpit of Mahomet, and preached up the glory of fighting 
the good fight of faith for God and the prophet. He then gave 
Abdallah an epistle for Abu Obeidah, filled with edifying texts 
from the Koran, and ending with an assurance that he would 
pray for him, and would, moreover, send him a speedy rein¬ 
forcement. This done, he pronounced a blessing on Abdallah, 
and bade him depart with all speed. 

Abdallah was well advanced on his return, when he called to 
mind that he had omitted to visit the tomb of the prophet. 
Shocked at his forgetfulness, he retraced his steps, and sought 
the dwelling of Ayesha, within which the prophet lay interred. 
He found the beautiful widow reclining beside the tomb, and 
listening to Ali and Abbas, who were reading the Koran, while 
Hassan and Hosein, the two sons of Ali and grandsons of the 
prophet, were sitting on their knees. 

Having paid due honors to the prophet’s tomb, the consider¬ 
ate messenger expressed his fears that this pious visit might 
prevent his reaching the army before the expected battle; 
whereupon the holy party lifted up their hands to heaven, and 
Ali put up a prayer for his speedy journey. Thus inspirited, 
he set out anew, and travelled with such unusual and incredi¬ 
ble speed that the army looked upon it as miraculous, and at¬ 
tributed it to the blessing of Omar and the prayer of Ali. 

The promised reinforcement was soon on foot. It consisted 
of eight thousand men under the command of Seid Ibn Amir, 
to whom the Caliph gave a red silk banner, and a word of ad¬ 
vice at parting; cautioning him to govern himself as well as 
his soldiers, and not to let his appetites get the better of his 
self-command. 

Seid, with Moslem frankness, counselled him, in return, to * 
fear God and not man; to love all Moslems equally with his 
own kindred; to cherish those at a distance equally with those 
at hand; finally, to command nothing but what was right and 
to forbid nothing but what was wrong. The Caliph listened 
attentively, his forehead resting on his staff and his eyes cast 
upon the ground. When Seid had finished, he raised his head, 
and the tears ran down his cheek. “Alas!” said he, “ wno can 
do all this without the aid of God.” 

Seid Ibn Amir led his force by the shortest route across tho 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


297 


deserts, and hurrying forward with more rapidity than heed, 
lost his way. While he halted one night, in the vicinity of 
some springs, to ascertain his route, he was apprised by his 
scouts that the prefect of Ammon, with five thousand men, 
was near at hand. He fell upon him instantly and cut the in¬ 
fantry to pieces. The prefect fled with his cavalry, hut em 
countered a foraging party from the Moslem camp, the leader 
of which, Zobeir, thrust a lance through his body, and between 
the two parties not a man of his troop escaped. The Moslems 
then placed the heads of the Christians on their lances, and ar¬ 
rived with their ghastly trophies at the camp, to the great en¬ 
couragement of Abu Obeidah and his host. 

The imperial army had now drawn near, and Manuel, the 
general, attempted again to enter into negotiations. Khaled 
offered to go and confer with him; but his real object was to 
attempt the release of his friends and brethren in arms, Abu 
Sofian, Derar, Kafi, and the two other officers captured in the 
late skirmish with the apostate Jabalah. 

When Khaled reached the outpost of the Christian army, he 
was required to leave his escort of one hundred chosen war¬ 
riors, and proceed alone to the presence of the general; but he 
refused. He equally refused a demand that he and his men 
should dismount and deliver up their scimetars. After some 
parley he was permitted to enter into the presence of the 
general in his own way. 

Manuel was seated in state on a kind of throne, surrounded 
by his officers, all splendidly arrayed, while Khaled entered 
with his hundred war-worn veterans, clad in the simplest 
guise. Chairs were set out for him and his principal compan¬ 
ions, but they pushed them aside and seated themselves cross- 
legged on the ground, after the Arabic manner. When Manuel 
demanded the reason, Khaled replied by quoting a verse from 
the twentieth chapter of the Koran. ‘‘ Of earth ye are created, 
‘from earth ye came, and unto earth ye must return.” “God 
made the earth,” added he, “and what God has made for men 
to sit upon is more precious than your silken tapestries.” 

The conference was begun by Manuel, who expostulated on 
the injustice of the Moslems in making an unprovoked inroad 
into the territories of their neighbors, molesting them in their 
religious worship, robbing them of their wives and property, 
and seizing on their persons as slaves, Khaled retorted, that 
it was all owing to their own obstinacy, in refusing to acknow¬ 
ledge that there was but one God, without relation or associate. 


298 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


and that Mahomet was his prophet. Their discussion grew 
violent, and Khaled, in his heat, told Manuel that he should one 
day see him dragged into the presence of Omar with a halter 
round his neck, there to have his head struck off as an example 
to all infidels and for the edification of true believers. 

Manuel replied, in wrath, that Khaled was protected by his 
character of ambassador; but that he would punish his inso¬ 
lence by causing the five Moslem captives, his friends, to be 
instantly beheaded. Khaled defied him to execute his threat, 
swearing by Allah, by his prophet, and by the holy Caaba, that 
if a hair of their heads were injured, he would slay Manuel with 
his own hand on the spot, and that each of his Moslems present 
should slay his man. So saying, he rose and drew his scimetar, 
as did likewise his companions. 

The imperial general was struck with admiration at his in¬ 
trepidity. He replied calmly, that what he had said was a 
mere threat, which his humanity and his respect for the mis¬ 
sion of Khaled would not permit him to fulfil. The Saracens 
were pacified and sheathed their swords, and the conference 
went on calmly. 

In the end, Manuel gave up the five prisoners to Khaled as a 
token of his esteem; and in return Khaled presented him with 
a beautiful scarlet pavilion, which he had brought with him, 
and pitched in the Christian camp, and for which Manuel had 
expressed a desire. Thus ended this conference, and both par¬ 
ties retired from it with soldier-like regard for each other. 


CIIAPTEK XVII. 

THE BATTLE OF YERMOUK. 

The great battle was now at hand that was to determine the 
fate of Syria, for the emperor had staked the fortunes of this 
favorite province on a single but gigantic blow. Abu Obeidah, 
conscious of the momentous nature of the conflict, and diffi¬ 
dent of his abilities in the field, gave a proof of his modesty 
and magnanimity by restoring to Khaled the command of the 
whole army. For himself he took his station with the women 
in the rear, that he might rally the Moslems should any of 
them be inclined to fly the field. Here he erected his standard, 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 299 

a yellow flag, given him by Abu Beker, being the same which 
Mahomet had displayed in the battle of Khaibar. 

Before the action commenced Khaled rode among his troops, 
making a short but emphatic speech. “ Paradise,” cried he, 
“ is before you; the devil and hell behind. Fight bravely, and 
you will secure the one; fly, and you will fall into the other.” 

The armies closed, but the numbers of the Christians and 
the superiority of Greek and Roman discipline bore down the 
right wing of the Moslems. Those, however, who turned their 
backs and attempted to fly were assailed with reproaches and 
blows by the women, so that they found it easier to face the 
enemy than such a storm. Even Abu Sofifin himself received 
a blow over the face with a tent-pole from one of those vira¬ 
goes, as he retreated before the enemy. 

Thrice were the Moslems beaten back by the steady bearing 
of the Grecian phalanx, and thrice were they checked and 
driven back to battle by the women. Night at length brought 
a cessation of the bloody conflict; when Abu Obeidah went 
round among the wounded, ministering to them with his own 
hands, while the women bound up their wounds with tender 
care. 

The battle was renewed on the following morning, and again 
the Moslems were sorely pressed. The Christian archers made 
fearful havoc, and such was their dexterity that, among the 
great number of Moslems who suffered from their arrows on 
that day, seven hundred lost one or both eyes. Hence it was 
commemorated as “the Day of the Blinding;” and those who 
had received such wounds gloried in them, in after years, as 
so many trophies of their having struggled for the faith in that 
day of hard fighting. There were several single combats of 
note; among others, Serjabil was engaged hand to hand with a 
stout Christian; but Serjabil, having signalized his piety by 
excessive watching and fasting, was so reduced in flesh and 
strength that he was no match for his adversary, and would 
infallibly have been overpowered had not Derar come behind 
the Christian and stabbed him to the heart. Both warriors 
claimed the spoil, but it was adjudged to him who slew the 
enemy. In the course of this arduous day the Moslems more 
than once wavered, but were rallied back by the valor of 
the women. Caulah, the heroic sister of Derar, mingling in 
the fight, was wounded and struck down; but Offeirah, her 
female friend, smote off the head of her opponent and rescued 
her. The battle lasted as long as there was light enough to 


300 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


distinguish friend from foe; but the night was welcome to the 
Moslems, who needed all their enthusiasm and reliance on the 
promises of the prophet to sustain them, so hard was the strug¬ 
gle and so overwhelming the numbers of the enemy. On this 
night the good Abu Obeidah repeated at once the prayers be¬ 
longing to two separate hours, that his weary soldiers might 
enjoy uninterrupted sleep. 

For several successive days this desperate battle, on which 
hung the fate of Syria, was renewed with various fortunes. 
In the end the fanatic valor of the Moslems prevailed; the 
Christian host was completely routed and fled in all direc¬ 
tions. Many were overtaken and slain in the difficult passes 
of the mountains; others perished in a deep part of the river 
to which they were decoyed by one of their own people, in 
revenge for an injury. Manuel, the imperial general, fell by 
the hand of a Moslem named Noman Ibn Alkamah. 

Abu Obeidah went over the battle-field in person, seeing that 
the wounded Moslems were well taken care of, and the slain 
decently interred. He was perplexed for a time on finding 
some heads without bodies, to know whether they were Mos¬ 
lems or infidels, but finally prayed over them at a venture and 
had them buried like the rest. 

In dividing the spoils, Abu Obeidah, after setting aside one 
fifth for the Caliph and the public treasury, allotted to each 
foot soldier one portion and to each horseman three—two for 
himself and one for his steed; but for each horse of the pure 
Arabian breed he allowed a double portion. This last allot¬ 
ment met with opposition, but was subsequently confirmed by 
the Caliph, on account of the superior value of true Arabian 
horses. 

Such was the great battle fought on the banks of the Yer- 
mouk, near the city of that name, in the month of November 
a.d. 636, and in the 15th year of the Hegira. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 

The Moslem invaders reposed for a month at Damascus 
from the toil of conquest, during which time Abu Obeidah sent 
to the Caliph to know whether he should undertake the siege 



MAIIOMET AND J1IS SUCCESSORS. 


301 


of Caesarea or Jerusalem. Ali was with Omar at the time, 
an^ advised the instant siege of the latter; for such, he said, 
had been the intention of the prophet. The enterprise against 
Jerusalem was as a holy war to the Moslems, for they rever¬ 
enced it as an ancient seat of prophecy and revelation, con¬ 
nected with the histories of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, and 
sanctified by containing the tombs of several of the ancient 
prophets. The Caliph adopted the advice of Ali, and ordered 
Abu Obeidah to lead his army into Palestine, and lay siege to 
Jerusalem. 

On receiving these orders, Abu Obeidah sent forward Yezed 
Abu Sofian with five thousand men, to commence th« siege, 
and for five successive days detached after him considerable 
reinforcements. The people of Jerusalem saw the approach of 
these portentous invaders, who were spreading such consterna¬ 
tion throughout the East, but they made no sally to oppose 
them, nor sent out any one to parley, but planted engines on 
their walls, and prepared for vigorous defence. Yezed ap¬ 
proached the city and summoned it by sound of trumpet, pro¬ 
pounding the customary terms, profession of the faith or 
tribute: both were rejected with disdain. The Moslems would 
have made instant assault, but Yezed had no such instructions: 
he encamped, therefore, and waited until orders arrived from 
Abu Obeidah to attack the city, when he made the necessary 
preparations. 

At cock-crow in the morning the Moslem host waa mar¬ 
shalled, the leaders repeated the matin prayer each at the 
head of his battalion, and all, as if by one consent, with a loud 
voice gave the verse from the Koran,* “ Enter ye, oh people, 
into the holy land which Allah hath destined for you.” 

For ten days they made repeated but unavailing attacks; on 
the eleventh day Abu Obeidah brought the whole army to 
their aid. He immediately sent a written summons requiring 
the inhabitants to believe in the unity of God, the divine 
mission of Mahomet, the resurrection and final judgment; or 
else to acknowledge allegiance, and pay tribute to the Caliph; 
“otherwise,” concluded the letter, “I will bring men against 
you, who love death better than you love wine or swine’s flesh; 
nor will I leave you, God willing, until I have destroyed your 
fighting men, and made slaves of your children.” 


* These words are from the fifth chapter of the Koran, where Mahomet puts 
them into the mouth of Moses, as addressed to the childi 511 cf Israel. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


302 

Tlie summons was addressed to the magistrates and princi¬ 
pal inhabitants of ^lia, for so Jerusalem was named after the 
emperor iElius Adrian, when he rebuilt that city. 

Sophronius, the Christian patriarch, or bishop of Jerusalem; 
replied that this was the holy city, and the holy land, and 
that whoever entered either, for a hostile purpose, was an 
offender in the eyes of God. He felt some confidence in set¬ 
ting the invaders at defiance, for the walls and towers of the 
city had been diligently strengthened, and the garrison had 
been reinforced by fugitives from Yermouk, and from various 
parts of Syria. The city, too, was strong in its situation, 
being surrounded by deep ravines and a broken country; and 
above all there was a pious incentive to courage and persever¬ 
ance in defending the sepulchre of Christ. 

Four wintry months elapsed; every day there was sharp 
skirmishing; the besiegers were assailed by sallying parties, 
annoyed by the engines on the walls, and harassed by the in¬ 
clement weather; still they carried on the siege with un¬ 
diminished spirit. At length the Patriarch Sophronius held a 
parley from the walls with Abu Obeidah. “Do you not 
know,” said he, “that this city is holy; and that whoever 
offers violence to it, draws upon his head the vengeance of 
Heaven?” 

“We know it,” replied Abu Obeidah, “to be the house of 
the prophets, where their bodies lie interred; we know it to 
be the place whence our prophet Mahomet made his nocturnal 
ascent to heaven; and we know that we are more worthy of 
possessing it than you are, nor will we raise the siege until 
Allah has delivered it into our hands, as he has done many 
other places.” 

Seeing there was no further hope, the patriarch consented 
to give up the city, on condition that the Caliph would come 
/ in person to take possession and sign the articles of surrender. 

When this unusual stipulation was made known to the 
Caliph, he held a council with his friends. Othman despised 
the people of Jerusalem, and was for refusing their terms, but 
Ali represented the sanctity and importance of the place in the 
eyes of the Christians, which might prompt them to reinforce 
it, and to make a desperate defence if treated with indignity. 
Besides, he added, the presence of the Caliph would cheer and 
inspirit the army in their long absence, and after the hardships 
of a wintry campaign. 

The words of Ali had their weight with the Caliph: though 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


803 


certain Arabian writers pretend that he was chiefly moved by a 
tradition handed down in Jerusalem from days of yore, which 
said that a man of his name, religion, and personal appearance 
should conquer the holy city. Whatever may have been his 
inducements, the Caliph resolved to receive in person the sur¬ 
render of Jerusalem. He accordingly appointed Ali to officiate 
in his place during his absence from Medina; then, having 
prayed at the mosque, and paid a pious visit to the tomb of the 
prophet, he set out on his journey. 

The progress of this formidable potentate, who already held 
the destinies of empires in his grasp, and had the plunder of 
the Orient at his command, is characteristic of the primitive 
days of Mahometanism, and reveals, in some measure, the 
secret of its success. He travelled on a red or sorrel camel, 
across which was slung an alforja, or wallet, with a huge sack 
or pocket at each end, something like the modern saddle-bags. 
One pocket contained dates and dried fruits, the other a provi¬ 
sion called sawik, which was nothing more than barley, rice, 
or wheat, parched or sodden. Before him hung a leathern 
bottle, or sack, for water, and behind him a wooden platter. 
His companions, without distinction of rank, ate with him out 
of the same dish, using their fingers according to Oriental 
usage. He slept at night on a mat spread out under a tree, or 
under a common Bedouin tent of hair-cloth, and never re¬ 
sumed his march until he had offered up the morning prayer. 

As lie journeyed through Arabia in this simple way, he 
listened to the complaints of the people, redressed their griev¬ 
ances, and administered justice with sound judgment and a 
rigid hand. Information was brought to him of an Arab who 
was married to two sisters, a. practice not unusual among 
idolaters, but the man was now a Mahometan. Omar cited 
the culprit and his two wives into his presence, and taxed him 
roundly with his offence; but he declared his ignorance that 
it was contrary to the law of the prophet. 

“ Thou best!” said Omar; “thou shalt part with one of them 
instantly, or lose thy head.” 

“Evil was the day that I embraced such a religion,” mut¬ 
tered the culprit. “ Of what advantage has it been to me?” 

“ Come nearer to me,” said Omar; and on his approaching, 
the Caliph bestowed two wholesome blows on his head with 
his walking-staff. 

“Enemy of God and of thyself,” cried he, 4 ‘let these blows 
reform thy manners, and teach thee to speak with more rever- 


304 


MAHOMET AND 11IS SUCCESSORS. 


ence of a religion ordained by Allah , and acknowledged by the 
best of bis creatures.” 

He then ordered the offender to choose between his wives, 
and finding him at a loss which to prefer, the matter was 
determined by lot, and he was dismissed by the Caliph with 
this parting admonition: “Whoever professes Islam, and 
afterward renounces it, is punishable with death; therefore 
take heed to your faith. And as to your wife’s sister, whom 
you have put away, if ever I hear that you have meddled with, 
her, you shall be stoned.” 

At another place he beheld a number of men exposed to the 
burning heat of the sun by their Moslem conquerors, as a pun¬ 
ishment for failing to pay their tribute. Finding, on inquiry, 
that they were entirely destitute of means, he ordered them 
to be released; and turning reproachfully to their oppressors, 
“ Compel no men,” said he, “to more than they can bear; for 
I heard the apostle of God say he who afflicts his fellow man 
in this world will be punished with the fire of Jehennam.” 

While yet within a day’s journey of Jerusalem, Abu Obei- 
dah came to meet him and conduct him to the camp. The 
Caliph proceeded with due deliberation, never forgetting his 
duties as a priest and teacher of Islam. In the morning he 
said the usual prayers, and preached a sermon, in which he 
spoke of the security of those whom God should lead in the 
right way; but added, that there was no help for such as God 
should lead into error. 

A gray-headed Christian priest, who sat before him, could not 
resist the opportunity to criticise the language of the Caliph 
preacher. “ God leads no man into error,” said he, aloud. 

Omar deigned no direct reply, but, turning to those around, 
“ Strike off that old man’s head,” said he, “if he repeats his 
words.” 

The old man was discreet, and held his peace. There was no 
arguing against the sword of Islam. 

On his way to the camp Omar beheld a number of Arabs, 
who had thrown by the simple garb of their country, and 
arrayed themselves in the silken spoils of Syria. He saw the 
danger of this luxury and effeminacy, and ordered that they 
should be dragged with their faces in the dirt, and their silken 
garments torn from their backs. 

When he came in sight of Jerusalem he lifted up his voice 
and exclaimed, “Allah Achbar? God is mighty 1 God grant 
us an easy conquest!” Then commanding his tent go be 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


305 


pitched, he dismounted from his camel and sat down within it 
on the ground. The Christians thronged to see the sovereign 
of this new and irresistible people, who were overrunning and 
subduing the earth. The Moslems, fearful of an attempt at 
assassination, would have kept them at a distance, but Omai 
rebuked their fears. “Nothing will befall us but what God 
hath decreed. Let the faithful trust in him.” 

The arrival of the Caliph was followed by immediate capitm 
lation. When the deputies from Jerusalem were admitted to a 
parley, they were astonished to find this dreaded potentate a 
bald-headed man, simply clad, and seated on the ground in a 
tent of hair-cloth. 

The articles of surrender were drawn up in writing by Omar, 
and served afterward as a model for the Moslem leaders in 
other conquests. The Christians were to build no new 
churches in the surrendered territory. The church doors were 
to be set open to travellers, and free ingress permitted to 
Mahometans by day and night. The bells should only toll, and 
not ring, and no crosses should be erected on the churches, nor 
shown publicly in the streets. The Christians should not teach 
the Koran to their children; nor speak openly of their religion; 
nor attempt to make proselytes; nor hinder their kinsfolk 
from embracing Islam. They should not assume the Moslem 
dress, either caps, slippers, or turbans, nor part their hair like 
Moslems, but should always be distinguished by girdles. They 
should not use the Arabian language in inscriptions on their 
signets, nor salute after the Moslem manner, nor be called by 
Moslem surnames. They should rise on the entrance of a Mos¬ 
lem, and remain standing until he should be seated. They 
should entertain every Moslem traveller three days gratis. 
They should sell no wine, bear no arms, and use no saddle in 
riding; neither should they have any domestic who had been 
in Moslem service. 

Such were the degrading conditions imposed upon the proud 
pity of Jerusalem, once the glory and terror of the East, by the 
leader of a host of wandering Arabs. They were the conditions 
generally imposed by the Moslems in their fanatical career of 
conquest. Utter scorn and abhorrence of their religious adver¬ 
saries formed one of the main pillars of their faith. 

The Christians having agreed to surrender on these terms, 
the Caliph gave them, under his own hand, an assurance of 
protection in their lives and fortunes, the use of their churches, 
and the exercise of their religion. 


306 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Omar entered the once splendid city of Solomon on foot, in 
his simple Arab garb, with his walking-staff in his hand, and 
accompanied by the venerable Sophronius, with whom he 
talked familiarly, inquiring about the antiquities and public 
edifices. The worthy patriarch treated the conqueror with all 
outward deference, but, if we may trust the words of a Chris¬ 
tian historian, he loathed the dirty Arab in his heart, and was 
particularly disgusted with his garb of coarse woollen, patched 
with sheepskin. His disgust was almost irrepressible when 
they entered the church of the Resurrection, and Sophronius 
beheld the Caliph in his filthy attire, seated in the midst of the 
sacred edifice. ‘ ‘ This, of a truth, ” exclaimed he, ‘ ‘ is the abom¬ 
ination of desolation predicted by Daniel the prophet, standing 
in the holy place.” 

It is added that, to pacify the cleanly scruples of the patri¬ 
arch, Omar consented to put on clean raiment which he offered 
him, until his own garments were washed. 

An instance of the strict good faith of Omar is related as oc¬ 
curring on this visit to the Christian temples. While he was 
standing with the patriarch in the church of the Resurrection, 
one of the stated hours for Moslem worship arrived, and he 
demanded where he might pray. “Where you now are,” re¬ 
plied the patriarch. Omar, however, refused, and went forth. 
The patriarch conducted him to the church of Constantine, 
and spread a mat for him to pray there: but again he refused. 
On going forth, he knelt, and prayed on the flight of steps 
leading down from the east gate of the church. This done, he 
turned to the patriarch, and gave him a generous reason for 
his conduct. “Had I prayed in either of the churches,” said 
he, “the Moslems would have taken possession of it, and con¬ 
secrated it as a mosque.” 

So scrupulous was he in observing his capitulations respect¬ 
ing the churches, that he gave the patriarch a writing, forbid¬ 
ding the Moslems to pray upon the steps where he had prayed, 
except one person at a time. The zeal of the faithful, however, 
outstripped their respect for his commands, and one half of the 
steps and porch was afterward included in a mosque built over 
the spot which he had accidentally sanctified. 

The Caliph next sought the place where the temple of Solo¬ 
mon had stood, where he founded a mosque; which, in after 
times, being enlarged and enriched by succeeding Caliphs, be¬ 
came one of the noblest edifices of Islam worship, and second 
only to the magnificent mosque of Cordova. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


307 


The surrender of Jerusalem took place in the seventeenth 
year of the Hegira, and the six hundred and thirty-seventh 
year of the Christian era. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

PROGRESS OF THE MOSLEM ARMS IN SYRIA—SIEGE OF ALEPPO- 

OBSTINATE DEFENCE'BY YOUKENNA—EXPLOIT OF DAMAS—CAP¬ 
TURE OF THE CASTLE—CONVERSION OF YOUKENNA. 

The Caliph Omar remained ten days in Jerusalem, regulating 
the great scheme of Islam conquest. To complete the subju¬ 
gation of Syria, he divided it into two parts. Southern Syria, 
consisting of Palestine and the maritime towns, he gave in 
charge to Yezed Ibn Abu Sofian, with a considerable portion 
of the army to enable him to master it; while Abu Obeidah, 
with a larger force, had orders promptly to reduce all north¬ 
ern Syria, comprising the country lying between Hauran and 
Aleppo. At the same time, Amru Ibn al Aass, with a body of 
Moslem troops, was ordered to invade Egypt, which venerable 
and once mighty empire was then in a state of melancholy de¬ 
cline. Such were the great plans of Islam conquest in these 
regions; while at the same time, Saad Ibn Abi Wakkas, an¬ 
other of Omar’s generals, was pursuing a career of victories in 
the Persian territories. 

The return of Omar to Medina was hailed with joy by the 
inhabitants, for they had regarded with great anxiety and ap¬ 
prehension his visit to Jerusalem. They knew the salubrity 
of the climate, the fertility of the country, and the sacred char¬ 
acter of the city, containing the tombs of the prophets, and 
being the place, according to Moslem belief, where all mankind 
were to be assembled in the day of the resurrection. They had 
feared, therefore, that he would be tempted to fix his residence, 
for the rest of his days, in that consecrated city. Great was 
their joy, therefore, when they saw their Caliph re-enter their 
gates in his primitive simplicity, clad in his coarse Arab garb, 
and seated on his camel with his wallets of dried fruits and 
sodden corn; his leathern bottle and his wooden platter. 

Abu Obeidah departed from Jerusalem shortly after the 
Caliph, and marched with his army to the north, receiving in 



308 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the course of his progress through Syria the submission of the 
cities of Kennesrin and Alhaclir, the inhabitants of which ran¬ 
somed themselves and their possessions for five thousand 
ounces of gold, the like quantity of silver, two thousand suits 
of silken raiment, and as much figs and aloes as would load 
five hundred mules; he then proceeded toward the city of 
Aleppo, which the Caliph had ordered him to besiege. The 
inhabitants of this place were much given to commerce, and 
had amassed great wealth; they trembled, therefore, at the 
approach of these plundering sons of the desert, who had laid 
so many cities under contribution. 

The city of Aleppo was walled and fortified; but it depended 
chiefly for defence upon its citadel, which stood without the 
walls and apart from the city, on an artificial hill or mound, 
shaped like a truncated cone or sugar loaf, and faced with 
stone. The citadel was of great size, and commanded all the 
adjacent country; it was encompassed by a deep moat, which 
could be filled from springs of water, and was considered the 
strongest castle in all Syria. The governor, who had been 
appointed to this place by the emperor Heraclius, and who had 
held all the territory between Aleppo and the Euphrates, had 
lately died, leaving two sons, Youkenna and Johannas, who 
resided in the castle and succeeded to his command. They 
were completely opposite in character and conduct. You¬ 
kenna, the elder of the two, was a warrior, and managed the 
government, while Johannas passed his life in almost monkish 
retirement, devoting himself to study, to religious exercises, 
and to acts of charity. On the approach of the Moslems Jo¬ 
hannas sympathized with the fears of the wealthy merchants, 
and advised his brother to compound peaceably with the 
enemy for a ransom in money. “You talk like a monk,” 
replied the fierce Youkenna; “you know nothing that is due 
to the honor of a soldier. Have we not strong walls, a brave 
garrison, and ample wealth to sustain us, and shall we meanly 
buy a peace without striking a blow? Shut yourself up with 
your books and beads; study and pray, and leave the defence 
of the place to me.” 

The next day he summoned his troops, distributed money 
among them, and having thus roused their spirit, “ The 
Arabs,” said he, “have divided their forces; some are in Pal¬ 
estine, some have gone to Egypt, it can be but a mere detach¬ 
ment that is coming against us; I am for meeting them on the 
way, and giving them battle before they come near to Aleppo.” 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


309 


His troops answered his harangue with shouts, so he put him¬ 
self at the head of twelve thousand men, and sallied forth to 
encounter the Moslems on their march. 

Scarcely had this reckless warrior departed with his troops 
when the timid and trading part of the community gathered 
together, and took advantage of his absence to send thirty of 
the most important and opulent of the inhabitants to Abu 
Obeldah, with an offer of a ransom for the city. These worth¬ 
ies, when they entered the Moslem camp, were astonished at 
the order and tranquillity that reigned throughout, under the 
wise regulations of the commander-in-chief. They were re¬ 
ceived by Abu Obeidah with dignified composure, and in¬ 
formed him that they had come without the knowledge of 
Youkenna, their warlike governor, who had sallied out on a 
foray, and whose tyranny they found insupportable. After 
much discussion Abu Obeidah offered indemnity to the city of 
Aleppo, on condition that they should pay a certain sum of 
money, furnish provisions to his army, make discovery of 
everything within their knowledge prejudicial to his interests, 
and prevent Youkenna from returning to the castle. They 
agreed to all the terms except that relating to die castle, which 
it was impossible for them to execute. 

Abu Obeidah dispensed with that point, but exacted from 
them all an oath to fulfil punctually the other conditions, as¬ 
suring them of his protection and kindness, should they ob¬ 
serve it; but adding that, should they break it, they need 
expect no quarter. He then offered them an escort, which 
they declined, preferring to return quietly by the way they 
had come. 

In the mean time Youkenna, on the day after his sallying 
forth, fell in with the advance guard of the Moslem army, con¬ 
sisting of one thousand men under Caab Ibn Damarrah. He 
came upon them by surprise while watering their horses and 
resting themselves on the grass in negligent security. A des¬ 
perate fight was the consequence; the Moslems at first were 
successful, but were overpowered by numbers. One hundred 
and seventy were slain, most of the rest wounded, and their 
frequent cries of “ Ya Mahommed! Ya Mahommed!” (Oh Ma¬ 
homet! Oh Mahomet!) showed the extremity of their despair. 
Night alone saved them from total massacre; but Youkenna 
resolved to pursue the work of extermination with the morn¬ 
ing light. In the course of the night, however, one of his 
scouts brought him word of the peaceful negotiation carried 


310 


MAHOMET AND I1IS SUCCESSORS. 


on by the citizens of Aleppo during his absence. Boiling with 
rage, he gave up all further thought about Caab and his men, 
and hastening back to Aleppo, drew up his forces, and threat¬ 
ened to put everything to fire and sword unless the inhabi¬ 
tants renounced the treaty, joined him against the Moslems, 
and gave up the devisers of the late traitorous schemes. On 
their hesitating to comply with his demands, he charged on 
them with his troops, and put three hundred to the sword. 
The cries and lamentations of the multitude reached the pious 
Johannas in his retirement in the castle. He hastened to the 
scene of carnage, and sought, by prayers and supplications 
and pious remonstrances, to stay the fury of his brother. 
“What!” cried the fierce Youkenna, “shall I spare traitors 
who are leagued with the enemy and selling us for gold?” 

“Alas!” replied Johannas, “they have only sought their 
own safety; they are not fighting men.” 

“ Base wretch!” cried Youkenna in a frenzy, “ ’tis thou hast 
been the contriver of this infamous treason.” 

His naked sword was in his hand; his actions were even 
more frantic than his words, and in an instant the head of his 
meek and pious brother rolled on the pavement. 

The people of Aleppo were in danger of suffering more from 
the madness of the army than they had apprehended from the 
sword of the invader, when a part of the Moslem army ap¬ 
peared in sight, led on by Khaled. A bloody battle ensued 
before the walls of the town, three thousand of Youkenna’s 
troops were slain, and he was obliged to take refuge with a 
considerable number within the castle, where he placed en¬ 
gines on the walls and prepared to defend himself to the last 
extremity. 

A council was held in the Moslem camp. Abu Obeidah was 
disposed to besiege the citadel and starve out the garrison, but 
Khaled, with his accustomed promptness, was for instant as¬ 
sault, before the emperor could send reinforcements and sup¬ 
plies. As usual his bold counsel prevailed: the castle was 
stormed, and he headed the assault. The conflict was one of 
the fiercest in the wars of Syria. The besieged hurled huge 
stones from the battlements; many of the assailants were slain, 
many maimed, and Khaled was compelled to desist from the 
attack. 

In the dead of that very night, when the fires of the camp 
were extinguished, and the Moslems were sleeping after their 
hard-fought battle, Youkenna sallied forth with his troops. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


81 


fell on the enemy sword in hand, killed sixty, and bore off 
fifty prisoners; Khaled, however, was hard on his traces, and 
killed above a hundred of his men before they could shelter 
themselves within the castle. On the next morning Youkenna 
paraded his fifty prisoners on the walls of the citadel, ordered 
them to be beheaded, and threw their heads among the be¬ 
siegers. 

Learning from his spies that a detachment of Moslems were 
foraging the country, Youkenna sent out, secretly, a troop of 
horse in the night, who fell upon the foragers, killed nearly 
seven score of them, slew or hamstrung their camels, mules, 
and horses, and then hid themselves in the recesses of the 
mountains, awaiting the night to get back to the castle. 

Some fugitives carried tidings of this skirmish to the camp, 
and Khaled and Derar, with a troop of horse, were soon at the 
scene of combat. They found the ground strewed with the 
dead bodies of men and animals, learned from some peasants 
whither the enemy had retreated, and were informed of a nar¬ 
row defile by which they must return to the castle. Khaled 
and Derar stationed their troops in ambush in this defile. 
Late in the night they perceived the enemy advancing. They 
suffered them to get completely entangled in the defile, when, 
closing suddenly upon them on every side, they slew a number 
on the spot, and took three hundred prisoners. These were 
brought in triumph to the Moslem camp, where they would 
have redeemed themselves with ample ransom, but their heads 
were all stricken off in front of the castle, by way of retaliation. 

For five months did the siege of this fortress continue; all 
the attacks of the Moslems were repulsed, all their stratagems 
discovered and circumvented, for Youkenna had spies in the 
very camp of the enemy, who gave him intelligence by word, 
or signal, of every plan and movement. Abu Obeidah de¬ 
spaired of reducing this impregnable castle, which impeded 
him in his career of conquest, and wrote to the Caliph, propos¬ 
ing to abandon the siege and proceed against Antioch. The 
Caliph, in reply, ordered him by no means to desist, as that 
would give courage to the enemy, but to press the siege hard, 
and trust the event to God. As an additional reliance, he sent 
him a reinforcement of horse and foot, with twenty camels 
to facilitate the march of the infantry. Notwithstanding all 
this aid, the siege was continued for seven-and-forty days, 
with no greater prospect of success. 

While in this state of vexatious impediment and delay, Abu 


312 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Obeidah was one day accosted by one of the newly arrived sol- 
dieys, who told him that, if he would give him thirty men, all 
strong and valiant, he would pledge his head to put him in 
possession of the castle. The man who made this singular ap¬ 
plication was named Damas; he was of herculean strength and 
gigantic size, a brave soldier, and of great natural sagacity, 
although unimproved by education, as he was born a slave. 
Klialed backed his application, having heard of great exploits 
performed by him in Arabia. Abu Obeidah, in his perplexi¬ 
ties, was willing to adopt any expedient to get possession of 
this obstinate castle, and the Arabs were always prone to 
strange and extravagant stratagems in their warfare. He ac¬ 
cordingly placed thirty of his bravest men under command of 
Damas, charging them to obey him implicitly, notwithstand¬ 
ing his base condition; at the same time, in compliance with 
his request, he removed with his army to the distance of a 
league, as though about to abandon the siege. 

It was now night, and Damas concealed his thirty men near 
to the castle, charging them not to stir, nor utter a sound. He 
then went out alone and brought in six Christian prisoners, 
one after another. He questioned them in Arabic, but they 
were ignorant of the language, and replied in their own 
tongue. “The curse of Allah on these Christian dogs and 
their barbarous jargon, which no man can understand,” cried 
the rude Arab, and in his rage he smote off their heads. 

He went forth again, and saw a man sliding down the wall, 
whom he seized the moment he touched the ground. He was 
a Christian Arab, and was endeavoring to escape from the 
tyranny of Youkenna, and from him Damas obtained the in¬ 
formation he desired. He instantly dispatched two men to 
Abu Obeidah, requesting him to send him some horse about 
sunrise. He then took a goat-skin from his wallet, with which 
he covered his back and shoulders, and a dry crust of bread in 
his hand, and crept on all-fours close to the wall of the castle. 
His men crept silently after nim. When he heard a noise he 
gnawed his crust with a sound like that of a dog gnawing a 
bone, and his followers remained motionless. In this way he 
reached a part of the castle wall which was easiest of access. 
Then seating himself on the ground he made one of his men 
seat himself on his shoulders, and so on until seven were thus 
mounted on each other. Then he who was uppermost stood 
upright, and so did the others in succession, until Damas rose 
from the ground upon bis feet, and sustained the whole by his 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


313 


wondrous strength, each rendering such aid as he could by 
bearing against the wall. The uppermost man was now en¬ 
abled to scramble upon the battlement, where he found a 
Christian sentinel drunk and asleep. He seized and threw 
him down to the Moslems below the wall, who instantly dis¬ 
patched him. He then unfolded his turban and drew up the 
man below him, and they two the next, and so on until Damas 
was also on the wall. 

Damas now enjoined silence on them all, and left them. He 
found two other sentinels sleeping, ’whom he despatched with 
his dagger, and then made his way to an aperture for the dis¬ 
charge of arrows, looking through which he beheld Youkenna 
in a spacious chamber, richly clad, seated on tapestry of scar¬ 
let silk, flowered with gold, drinking and making merry with 
a large company; for it would seem as if, on the apparent de¬ 
parture of the besieging army, the whole castle had been given 
up to feasting and carousing. 

Damas considered the company too numerous to be at¬ 
tacked; returning to his men, therefore, he explored cau¬ 
tiously with them the interior of the castle. Coming suddenly 
upon the guards at the main entrance, who had no apprehen¬ 
sion of danger from within, they killed them, threw open the 
gate, let down the drawbridge, and were joined by the residue 
of their party. The castle was by this time alarmed; the gar¬ 
rison, half drunk and half asleep, came rushing from all quar¬ 
ters in wild confusion. The Moslems defended themselves 
stoutly on the drawbridge and in the narrow pass of the bar¬ 
bican until the dawn of day, when a shout of Allah Achbar 
was heard, and Khaled, with a troop of horse, came thunder¬ 
ing through the gate. 

The Christians threw down their arms and cried for mercy. 
Khaled offered them their choice, death or the faith of Islam. 
Youkenna was the first to raise his finger and pronounce the 
formula; his example was followed by several of his leading 
men, whereupon their wives and children and property were 
secured to them. The castle, having been taken by storm, 
was completely plundered, and the spoils were divided among 
the army, excepting the usual fifth part reserved for the Ca¬ 
liph. Damas and his brave companions, who had been almost 
cut to pieces in the fight, were praised to the skies, nor would 
Abu Obeidah stir with his host until those of them who sur¬ 
vived were out of danger from their wounds. 


814 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XX. 

PERFIDY OF YOUKENNA TO HIS FORMER FRIENDS—ATTEMPTS 
THE CASTLE OF AAZAZ BY TREACHERY—CAPTURE OF THE 
CASTLE. 

It is a circumstance worthy of remark in the history both of 
Mahomet and his successors, that the most inveterate enemies 
of the Islam faith, when once converted to it, even though 
their conversion were by the edge of the sword, that great 
Moslem instrument of persuasion, became its faithful de¬ 
fenders. Such was the case with Youkenna, who, from the 
time he embraced Islam with the Arab scimetar at his throat, 
became as determined a champion of its doctrines as he had 
before been an opponent. Like all new converts, he was 
anxious to give striking proofs of his zeal; he had slain a 
brother in supporting his old faith, he now proposed to betray 
a cousin in promoting the interests of the new. This cousin, 
whose name was Theodorus, was governor of an important 
town and fortress, named Aazaz, situated at no great distance 
from Aleppo, and which it was necessary for the Moslems to 
secure before they left that neighborhood. The castle was of 
great strength, and had a numerous garrison, but Youkenna 
offered to put it into the hands of Abu Obeidah by stratagem. 
His plan was, to have one hundred Moslems disguised as 
Christian soldiers; with these he would pretend to fly to the 
fortress of Aazaz for refuge; being pursued at a distance by a 
large body of Arabs, who, after coming in sight of the place, 
would appear to retire in despair, but would conceal them¬ 
selves in the neighborhood. His cousin Theodorus, who knew 
... nothing of his conversion, would receive him with perfect con¬ 
fidence; at a concerted hour of the night he and his men 
would fall suddenly upon the garrison, and at the same time 
throw open the gates to the party without the walls, and 
between them both he had no doubt of carrying the place 
without difficulty. 

Abu Obeidah held counsel with Khaled, who pronounced 
the stratagem apt and feasible, provided the sincerity of You- 
kenna’s conversion might be depended upon. The new prose¬ 
lyte managed to obtain their confidence, and was dispatched 
on his enterprise with one hundred chosen men, selected by 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


015 


tens from ten tribes of Arabs. After they had departed a 
sufficient time, one thousand men were sent in pretended 
pursuit, headed by Malec Alashtar, who was instructed in the 
whole stratagem. 

These Moslem wars were always a tissue of plot and counter¬ 
plot, of which this whole story of Youkenna is a striking 
example. Scarce had this scheme of treachery been devised 
in the Moslem camp, when the distant governor of Aazaz was 
apprised of it, with a success and celerity that almost seemed 
like magic. He had at that time a spy in the Moslem camp, 
an Arab of the tribe of Gassan, who sent him a letter tied 
under the wing of a carrier-pigeon, informing him of the 
apostasy of Youkenna, and of his intended treachery; though 
the spy was ignorant of that part of the plan relating to the 
thousand men under Malec Alashtar. On receiving this letter, 
Theodorus put his town and castle in a posture of defence, 
called in the Christian Arabs of the neighboring villages 
capable of bearing arms, and despatched a messenger named 
Tarik al Gassani to Lucas the prefect of Arrawendan, urging 
him to repair with troops to his assistance. 

Before the arrival of the latter, Youkenna appeared with his 
pretended fugitives before the gates of Aazaz, announcing that 
his castle was taken, and that he and his band were flying 
before pursuers. Theodorus sallied forth on horseback, at the 
head of many of his troops, as if to receive his cousin with all 
due honors. He even alighted from his steed, and, approach¬ 
ing Youkenna in a reverential manner, stooped as if to kiss 
his stirrup; but suddenly cutting the saddle girth, he pulled 
him with his face on the ground, and in an instant his hundred 
followers were likewise unhorsed and made prisoners. Theo¬ 
dorus then spat in the face of the prostrate Youkenna and 
reproached him with his apostasy and treachery; threatening 
to send him to answer for his crimes before the emperor 
Heraclius, and to put all his followers to the sword. 

In the mean time Tarik al Gassani, the Christian Arab, who 
had been sent by Theodorus to summon the prefect of Arra¬ 
wendan to his aid, had executed his errand, but on the way 
back fell into the hand of Malec, who was lying in ambus¬ 
cade with his thousand men. The sight of a naked scimetar 
drew from Tarik information that the plot of Youkenna had 
been discovered; that he had been sent after aid, and that 
Lucas, the prefect of Arrawendan, must be actually on his 
way with five hundred cavalry. 


316 


MAHOMET AHD IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


profiting by this information, Malec placed his thousand 
men so advantageously as completely to surprise and capture 
Lucas and his reinforcement, as they were marching in the 
night. He then devised a stratagem still to outwit the gov¬ 
ernor of Aazaz. First he disguised his five hundred men in 
dresses taken from their Christian prisoners, and gave them 
the Christian standard of the prefect of Arrawendan. Then 
summoning Tarik the messenger before him, and again dis¬ 
playing the scimetar, he exhorted him most earnestly to turn 
Mahometan. There was no resisting his arguments, and Tarik 
made a full and hearty profession of the faith. Malec then 
ordered him to prove his zeal for the good cause by proceeding 
to Aazaz and informing Theodorus that the prefect of Arra¬ 
wendan was at hand with a reinforcement of five hundred 
men. The double-faced courier departed on his errand, accom¬ 
panied by a trusty Moslem, who had secret orders to smite off 
his head if he should be found to waver; but there were still 
other plots at work in this tissue of stratagems. 

As Tarik and his companion approached Aazaz, they heard 
great shouting and the sound of trumpets, and this was the 
cause of the change. Theodorus, the governor, had committed 
Youkenna and his men into the custody of his son Leon. Now 
it so happened that the youth having frequently visited his 
father’s kinsmen at the castle of Aleppo, had become violently 
enamored of the daughter of Youkenna, but had met strong 
opposition to his love. The present breach between his father 
ah' Youkenna threatened to place an inseparable barrier 
between him and the gratification of his passion. Maddened 
by his desires, the youth now offered to Youkenna, if he would 
give him his daughter to wife, to embrace Mahometanism, and 
to set him and his companions at liberty. The offer was 
accepted. At the dead of the night, when the prisoners were 
armed and liberated, they fell upon the sleeping garrison; a 
tumultuous fight ensued, in the course of which Theodorus 
was slain, by the hand, it is said, of his unnatural son. 

It was in the height of this conflict that Tarik and his com¬ 
panion arrived at the place, and, learning the situation of 
affairs, hastened back to Malec Alashtar with the news. The 
latter hurried on with his troops and came in time to complete 
the capture of the place. He bestowed great praises on You¬ 
kenna, but the latter, taking him by the hand, exclaimed, 
“Thank Allah and this youth.” He then related the whole 
story. The pious Malec lifted up his eyes and hands in wonder 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


317 


“When Allah wills a thing,” exclaimed he, “he prepares the 
means.” 

Leaving Seid Ibn Amir in command of the place, with You- 
kenna’s band of a hundred men as a garrison, Malec Alashtar 
returned to the main army with great booty and many prison¬ 
ers. Youkenna, however, refused to accompany him. He 
was mortified at the questionable result of his undertaking 
against Aazaz, the place having been taken by other means 
than his own, and vowed not to show himself in the Moslem 
camp until he had retrieved his credit by some signal blow. 
Just at this time there arrived at Aazaz a foraging party of a 
thousand Moslems, that had been ravaging the neighboring 
country; among them were two hundred renegades, who had 
apostatized with Youkenna, and whose families and effects 
were in the castle of Aleppo. They were the very men for his 
purpose, and with these he marched off to execute one of his 
characteristic stratagems at Antioch. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

INTRIGUES OF YOUKENNA AT ANTIOCH—SIEGE OF THAT CITY BY 
THE MOSLEMS—FLIGHT OF THE EMPEROR TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
—SURRENDER OF ANTIOCH. 

The city of Antioch was at that time the capital of Syria, 
and the seat of the Roman government in the East. It was of 
great extent, surrounded by stone walls and numerous towers, 
and stood in the midst of a fertile country, watered by wells 
and fountains and abundant streams. Here Heraclius held his 
court, and here the Greeks, sunk in luxury and effeminacy, 
had lost all the military discipline and heroism that had made 
them conquerors in Asia. 

Toward this capital Youkenna proceeded with his band of 
two hundred men; but in the second watch of the night he 
left them, after giving them orders to keep on in the highway 
of the caravans, and on arriving at Antioch, to give themselves 
out as fugitives from Aleppo. In the meantime he, with two 
of his relatives, struck into a by-road, and soon fell into the 
hands of one of the emperor’s outposts. On announcing him¬ 
self Youkenna, late governor of Aleppo, he was sent under a 
guard of horse to Antioch. 



318 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


The emperor Heraclius, broken in spirit by his late reverses 
and his continual apprehensions, wept at the sight of Yom 
kenna, and meekly upbraided him with his apostasy and 
treason, but the latter, with perfect self-possession and effront¬ 
ery, declared that whatever he had done was for the purpose 
of preserving his life for the emperor’s service; and cited the 
obstinate defence lie had made at Aleppo and his present volun¬ 
tary arrival at Antioch as proofs of his fidelity. The emperor 
was easily deceived by a man he had been accustomed to regard 
as one of his bravest and most devoted officers; and indeed 
the subtle apostate had the address to incline most of the cour¬ 
tiers in his favor. To console him for what was considered 
his recent misfortunes, he was put in command of the two 
hundred pretended fugitives of his former garrison, as soon as 
they arrived at Antioch; he had thus a band of kindred rene¬ 
gades, ready to aid him in any desperate treachery. Further¬ 
more, to show his entire confidence in him, the emperor sent 
him with upward of two thousand men, to escort his youngest 
daughter from a neighboring place to the court at Antioch. 
He performed his mission with correctness; as he and his 
troop were escorting the princess about midnight, the neighing 
of their horses put them on the alert, and sending out scouts 
they received intelligence of a party of Moslems asleep, with 
their horses grazing near them. They proved to be a body of a 
thousand Christian Arabs, under Haim, son of the apostate 
Jabalah Ibn al Ayam, who had made captives of Derar Ibn al 
Azwar and a foraging party of two hundred Moslems. They 
all proceeded together to Ajitioch, where the emperor received 
his daughter with great joy, and made Youkenna one of his 
chief counsellors. 

Derar and his men were brought into the presence of the 
emperor, and commanded to prostrate themselves before him, 
but they held themselves erect and took no heed of the com¬ 
mand. It was repeated more peremptorily. “’We bow to no 
created being,” replied Derar; “the prophet bids us to yield 
adoration to God alone.” 

The emperor, struck with this reply, propounded several 
questions touching Mahomet and his doctrines, but Derar, 
whose province did not lie in words, beckoned to Kais Ibn 
Amir, an old gray-headed Moslem, to answer them. A long 
and edifying conference ensued, in which, in reply to the 
searching questions of the emperor, the venerable Kais went 
into a history of the prophet, and of the various modes in 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


319 


which inspiration came upon him. Sometimes like the sound 
of a bell; sometimes in the likeness of an angel in human 
shape; sometimes in a dream; sometimes like the brightness of 
the dawning day; and that when it was upon him great drops 
of sweat rolled froi%his forehead, and a tremor seized upon his 
limbs. He furthermore descanted with eloquence upon the 
miracles of Mahomet, of his nocturnal journey to heaven, and 
bis conversation with the Most High. The emperor listened 
with seeming respect to all these matters, but they roused the 
indignation of a bishop who was present, and who pronounced 
Mahomet an impostor. Derar took fire in an instant; if he 
could not argue, he could make use of a soldier’s vocabulary, 
and he roundly gave the bishop the lie, and assailed him with 
all kinds of epithets. Instantly a number of Christian swords 
flashed from their scabbards, blows were aimed at him from 
every side; and according to Moslem accounts he escaped 
death only by miracle; though others attribute it to the hurry 
and confusion of his assailants, and to the interference of You- 
kenna. The emperor was now for having him executed on the 
spot; but here the good offices of Youkeima again saved him, 
and his execution was deferred. 

In the mean time Abu Obeidah, with his main army, was 
making his victorious approaches, and subjecting all Syria to 
his arms. The emperor, in his miserable imbecility and blind 
infatuation, put the treacherous Youkenna in full command of 
the city and army. He would again have executed Derar and 
his fellow-prisoners, but Youkenna suggested that they had 
better be spared to be exchanged for any Christians that might 
be taken by the enemy They were then, by advice of the 
bishops, taken to one of the churches, and exhorted to embrace 
the Christian faith, but they obstinately refused. The Arabian 
writers, as usual, give them sententious replies to the questions 
put to them. “What hinders ye,” demanded the patriarch, 

‘ ‘ from turning Christians?” ‘ ‘ The truth of our religion, ” replied 
they.. Heraclius had heard of the mean attire of the Caliph 
Omar, and asked them why, having gained so much wealth by 
Lis conquests, he did not go richly clad like other princes? They 
replied that he cared not for this world, but for the world to 
come, and sought favor in the eyes of God alone. “ In what 
kind of a palace does he reside?” asked the emperor. “In a 
house built of mud.” “Who are his attendants?” “Beggars 
and the poor.” “ What tapestry does he sit upon?” “ Justice 
and equity.” “ What is his throne?” “ Abstinence and true 


320 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


knowledge. ” ‘ ‘ What is his treasure ?” “ Trust in God. ” “ An d 
who are his guard?” “ The bravest of the Unitarians.” 

Of all the prisoners one only could be induced to swerve 
from his faith; and he was a youth fascinated by the beauty 
and the unveiled charms of the Greek wymen. He was bap¬ 
tized with triumph; the bishops strove who most should honor 
him, and the emperor gave him a horse, a beautiful damsel to 
wife, and enrolled him in the army of Christian Arabs, com¬ 
manded by the renegade Jabalah; but he was upbraided in 
bitter terms by his father, who was one of the prisoners, and 
ready to die in the faith of Islam. 

The emperor now reviewed his army, which was drawn up 
outside of the walls, and at the head of every battalion was a 
wooden oratory with a crucifix; while a precious crucifix out 
of the main church, exhibited only on extraordinary occasions, 
was borne as a sacred standard before the treacherous You- 
kenna. One of the main dependences of Heraclius for the 
safety of Antioch was in the Iron Bridge, so called from its 
great strength. It was a bridge of stone across the river 
Orontes, guarded by two towers and garrisoned by a great 
force, having not less than three hundred officers. The fate of 
this most important pass shows the degeneracy of Greek dis¬ 
cipline and the licentiousness of the soldiery, to which in a 
great measure has been attributed the rapid successes of the 
Moslems. An officer of the court was charged to visit this 
fortress each day, and see that everything was in order. On 
one of his visits he found those who had charge of the towers 
drinking and revelling, whereupon he ordered them to be 
punished wdth fifty stripes each. They treasured the disgrace 
in their hearts; the Moslem army approached to lay siege to 
that formidable fortress, and when the emperor expected to 
hear of a long and valiant resistance, he was astonished by the 
tidings that the Iron Bridge had been surrendered without a 
i blow. 

Heraclius now lost heart altogether. Instead of calling a 
council of his generals, he assembled the bishops and wealth¬ 
iest citizens in the cathedral, and wept over the affairs of 
Syria. It was a time for dastard counsel; the apostate Jaba¬ 
lah proposed the assassination of the Caliph Omar as a means 
of throwing the affairs of the Saracens into confusion. The 
emperor was weak enough to consent, and Vathek Ibn Mo- 
sapher, a bold young Arab of the tribe of Jabalah, was dis¬ 
patched to Medina to effect the treacherous deed. The Ara- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


321 


bian historians give a miraculous close to this undertaking. 
Arriving at Medina, Vathek concealed himself in a tree, with¬ 
out the walls, at a place where the Caliph was accustomed to 
walk after the hour of prayers. After a time Omar ap¬ 
proached the place, and lay down to sleep near the foot of the 
tree. The assassin drew his dagger, and was descending, when 
he beheld a lion walking round the Caliph, licking his feet and 
guarding him as he slept. When he woke the lion went away 
upon which Vathek, convinced that Omar was under the pro¬ 
tection of Heaven, hastened down from the tree, kissed his 
hand in token of allegiance, revealed his treacherous errand, 
and avowed his conversion to the Islam faith. 

The surrender of the Iron Bridge had laid open Antioch to 
the approach of Abu Obeidah, and he advanced in battle array 
to where the Christian army was drawn up beneath its walls. 
Nestorius, one of the Christian commanders, sallied forth 
from among the troops and defied the Moslems to single com¬ 
bat. Damas, the herculean warrior, who had taken the castle 
of Aleppo, spurred forward to meet him, but his horse stum¬ 
bled and fell with him, and he was seized as the prisoner of 
Nestorius, and conveyed to his tent, where he was bound hand 
and foot. Dehac, another Moslem, took his place, and a brave 
fight ensued between him and Nestorius. The parties, how¬ 
ever, were so well matched that, after fighting for a long time 
until both were exhausted, they parted by mutual consent. 
While this fight was going on, the soldiers, horse and foot, of 
either army, thronged to see it, and in the tumult the tent of 
Nestorius was thrown down. There were but three servants 
left in charge of it. Fearful of the anger of their master, they 
hastened to set it up again, and loosened the bands of Damas 
that he might assist them; but the moment he was free he 
arose in his giant strength, seized two of the attendants, one 
in each hand, dashed their heads against the head of the third, 
and soon laid them all lifeless on the ground. Then opening a 
chest, he arrayed himself in a dress belonging to Nestorius, 
armed himself with a sabre, sprang on a horse that stood 
ready saddled, and cut his way through the Christian Arabs 
of Jabalah to the Moslem host. 

While these things were happening without the walls, trea¬ 
son was at work in the city. Youkenna, who commanded 
there, set free Derar and his fellow-prisoners, furnished them 
with weapons, and joined to them his own band of renegadoes. 
The tidings of this treachery and the apprehension of revolt 


322 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


among his own troops struck despair to the heart of Heraclius. 
He had been terrified by a dream in which he had found him¬ 
self thrust from his throne, and his crown falling from his 
head; the fulfilment appeared to be at hand. Without wait¬ 
ing to withstand the evil, he assembled a few domestics, made 
* a secret retreat to the sea-shore, and set sail for Constanti¬ 
nople. 

The generals of Heraclius, more brave than their emperor, 
fought a pitched battle beneath the walls; but the treachery 
of Youkenna and the valor of Derar and his men, who fell on 
them unawares, rendered their gallant struggle unavailing; 
the people of Antioch seeing the battle lost capitulated for the 
safety of their city at the cost of three hundred thousand 
golden ducats, and Abu Obediah entered the ancient capital 
of Syria in triumph. This event took place on the 21st of 
August, in the year of redemption G38. 


CHAPTER XXn. 

EXPEDITION INTO THE MOUNTAINS OF SYRIA—STORY OF A 
MIRACULOUS CAP. 

The discreet Abu Obeidah feared to exposed his troops to the 
enervating delights of Antioch, and to the allurements of the 
Greek women, and, after three days of repose and refresh¬ 
ment, marched forth from that luxurious city. He wrote a 
letter to the Caliph, relating his important conquest, and the 
flight of the emperor Heraclius; and added that he discovered; 
a grievous propensity among his troops to intermarry with the. 
beautiful Grecian females, which he had forbidden them to do, 
as contrary to the injunctions of the Koran. 

The epistle was delivered tp Omar just as he was departing 
on a pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by the widows of the 
prophet. When he had read the letter he offered prayers and 
thanksgiving to Allah, but wept over Abu Obeidah’s rigor to 
his soldiers. Seating himself upon the ground, he immedi¬ 
ately wrote a reply to his general, expressing his satisfaction 
at his success, but exhorting him to more indulgence to his 
soldiers. Those who had fought the good fight ought to be 
permitted to rest themselves, and to enjoy the good things 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


w 

they had gained. Such as had no wives at home, might marry 
in Syria, and those who had a desire for female slaves might 
purchase as many as they chose. 

While the main army reposed after the taking of Antioch, 
the indefatigable Khaled, at the head of a detachment, scoured 
the country as far as to the Euphrates; took Membege, the 
ancient Hierapolis, by force, and Berah and Bales, and other 
places, by capitulation, receiving a hundred thousand pieces 
of gold by way of ransom, besides laying the inhabitants under 
annual tribute. 

Abu Obeidah, in an assemblage of his officers, now proposed 
an expedition to subdue the mountains of Syria; but no one 
stepped forward to volunteer. The mountains were rugged 
and sterile, and covered with ice and snow for the greater part 
of the year, and the troops already began to feel the effects of 
the softening climate and delights of Syria. At length a can¬ 
didate presented himself, named Meisara Ibn Mesroud; a num¬ 
erous body of picked men was placed under his command, and 
a black flag was given him, bearing the inscription, ‘ ‘ There is 
no God but God. Mahomet is the messenger of God.” Damas 
accompanied him at the head of one thousand black Ethiopian 
slaves. The detachment suffered greatly in the mountains, for 
they were men of sultry climates, unaccustomed to ice and 
snow, and they passed suddenly from a soft Syrian summer to 
the severity of frozen winter, and from the midst of abundance 
to regions of solitude and sterility. The inhabitants, too, of 
the scanty villages, fled at their approach. At length they cap¬ 
tured a prisoner, who informed them that an imperial army of 
many thousand men was lying in wait for them in a valley 
about three leagues distant, and that all the passes behind them 
were guarded. A scout, dispatched in search of intelligence, 
confirmed this news; whereupon they intrenched themselves 
in a commanding position, and dispatched a fleet courier to 
Abu Obeidah, to inform him of their perilous situation. 

The courier made such speed that when he reached the pres¬ 
ence of Obeidah he fainted through exhaustion. Khaled, who 
had just ■ returned from his successful expedition to the Eu¬ 
phrates, instantly hastened to the relief of Meisara, with three 
thousand men, and was presently followed by Ayad Ibn Ga- 
nam, with two thousand more. 

Khaled found Meisara and his men making desperate stand 
against an overwhelming force. At the sight of this powerful 
reinforcement, with the black eagle of Khaled in the advance, 


>324 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the Greeks gave over the attack and returned to their camp, 
but secretly retreated in the night, leaving their tents stand¬ 
ing, and bearing off captive Abdallah Ibn Hodafa, a near rela¬ 
tive of the prophet and a beloved friend of the Caliph Omar, 
whom they straightway sent to the emperor at Constantinople. 

The Moslems forbore to pursue the enemy through these 
difficult mountains, and, after plundering the deserted tents, 
returned to the main army. When the Caliph Omar received 
tidings from Abu Obeidah of the capture of Abdallah Ibn 
Hodafa, he was grieved at heart, and dispatched instantly an 
epistle to the emperor Heraclius at Constantinople. 

“ Bismillah! In the name of the all-merciful God! 

“Praise be to Allah, the Lord of this world, and of that 
which is to come, who has neither companion, wife, nor son; 
and blessed be Mahomet his apostle. Omar Ibn al Khattab, 
servant of God, to Heraclius, emperor of the Greeks. As soon 
as thou shalt receive this epistle, fail not to send to me the 
Moslem captive whose name is Abdallah Ibn Hodafa. If thou 
doest this, I shall have hope that Allah will conduct thee in 
the right path. If thou dost refuse, I will not fail to send thee 
such men as traffic and merchandise have not turned from 
the fear of God. Health and happiness to all those who tread 
in the right way 1” 

In the mean time the emperor had treated his prisoner with 
great distinction, and as Abdallah was a cousin-german to the 
prophet, the son of one of his uncles, he was an object of great 
curiosity at Constantinople. The emperor proffered him lib¬ 
erty if he would only make a single sign of adoration to the 
crucifix, and magnificent rewards if he would embrace the 
Christian faith; but both proposals were rejected. Heraclius, 
say the Arab writers, then changed his treatment of him; shut 
him up for three days with nothing to eat and drink but 
swine’s flesh and wine, but on the fourth day found both un¬ 
touched. The faith of Abdallah was put to no further proof, 
as by this time the emperor received the stern letter from the 
Caliph. The letter had its effect. The prisoner was dismissed, 
with costly robes and rich presents, and Heraclius sent to 
Omar a diamond of great size and beauty; but no jeweller at 
Medina could estimate its value. The abstemious Omar re¬ 
fused to appropriate it to his own use, though urged to do so 
by the Moslems. He placed it in the public treasury, of which, 
from his office, he was the guardian and manager. It was 
afterward sold for a great sum. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


325 


A singular story is related by a Moslem writer, but not sup¬ 
ported by any rumor or surmise among Christian historians. 
It is said that the emperor Heraclius wavered in his faith, if he 
did not absolutely become a secret convert of Mahometanism, 
and this is stated as the cause. He was afflicted with a vio¬ 
lent pain in the head, for which he could find no remedy, until 
the Caliph Omar sent him a cap of mysterious virtue. So long 
as he wore this cap he was at ease, but the moment he laid 
it aside the pain returned. Heraclius caused the cap to be 
ripped open, and found within the lining a scrap of paper, on 
which was written in Arabic character, Bismillah! Arrah- 
mani Arrahimi! In the name of the all-merciful God. This 
cap is said to have been preserved among the Christians until 
the year 833, when it was given up by the governor i ef a be¬ 
sieged town to the Caliph Almotassem, on condition of his 
raising the siege. It was found still to retain its medicinal vir¬ 
tues, which the pious Arabians ascribed to the efficacy of the 
devout inscription. An unbelieving Christian will set it down 
among the charms and incantations which have full effect on 
imaginative persons inclined to credulity, but upon none 
others; such persons abounded among the Arabs. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

EXPEDITION OF AMRU IBN AL AASS AGAINST PRINCE CONSTAN¬ 
TINE IN SYRIA—THEIR CONFERENCE—CAPTURE OF TRIPOLI AND 
TYRE—FLIGHT OF CONSTANTINE—DEATH OF KHALED. 

The course of our history now turns to record the victories 
of Amru Ibn al Aass, to whom, after the capture of Jerusa¬ 
lem, the Caliph had assigned the invasion and subjugation of 
Egypt. Amru, however, did not proceed immediately to that 
country, but remained for some time with his division of the 
army, in Palestine, where some places still held out for the 
emperor. The natural and religious sobriety of the Arabs was 
still sorely endangered among the temptations of Syria. Sev¬ 
eral of the Moslem officers being seized, while on the march, 
with chills and griping pains in consequence of eating unripe 
grapes, were counselled by a crafty old Christian Arab to 
drink freely of wine which he produced, and which he pro¬ 
nounced a sovereign remedy. They followed his prescriptions 



) 


320 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


so lustily that they all came reeling into the camp to the great 
scandal of Amru. The punishment for drunkenness, recom¬ 
mended by Ali and adopted by the Caliph, was administered 
to the delinquents, who each received a sound bastinado on the 
soles of the feet. This sobered them completely, but so en¬ 
raged them with the old man who had recommended the pota¬ 
tions that they would have put him to death, had it not been 
represented to them that he was a stranger and under Moslem 
protection. 

Amru now advanced upon the city of Caesarea, where Con¬ 
stantine, son of the emperor, was posted with a large army. 
The Moslems were beset by spies, sent by the Christian com¬ 
mander to obtain intelligence. These were commonly Chris¬ 
tian Arabs, whom it was almost impossible to distinguish from 
those of the faith of Islam. One of these, however, after sit¬ 
ing one day by the camp fires, as he rose trod on the end of his 
own robe and stumbled; in his vexation he uttered an oath 
“by Christ!” He was immediately detected by his blasphemy 
to be a Christian and a spy, and was cut to pieces by the by¬ 
standers. Amru rebuked them for their precipitancy, as he 
might have gained information from their victim, and ordered 
bhat in future all spies should be brought to him. 

The fears of Constantine increased with the approach of the 
army, and he now dispatched a Christian priest to Amru, so¬ 
liciting him to send some principal officer to confer amicably 
with him. An Ethiopian negro, named Belal Ibn Eebah, of¬ 
fered to undertake the embassy. He was a man of powerful 
frame and sonorous voice, and had been employed by Ma¬ 
homet as a Muezzin or crier, to summon the people to prayers. 
Proud of having officiated under the prophet, he retired from 
office at his death, and had raised his voice but once since that 
event, and that was on the taking possession of Jerusalem, the 
city of the prophets, when, at the Caliph Omar’s command, he 
summoned the true believers to prayers with a force of lungs 
that astonished the Jewish inhabitants. 

Amru would have declined the officious offer of the vocifer¬ 
ous Ethiopian, representing to him that such a mission re¬ 
quired a smooth-spoken Arab, rather than one of his country; 
but, on Belal conjuring him in the name of Allah and the 
prophet to let him go, he reluctantly consented. When the 
priest saw who was to accompany him back to Constantine, 
he objected stoutly to such an ambassador, and glancing con¬ 
temptuously at the negro features of the Ethiopian, observed 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 327 

that Constantine had not sent for a slave but for an officer. 
The negro ambassador, however, persisted in his diplomatic 
errand, but was refused admission, and returned mortified and 
indignant. 

Amru now determined to undertake the conference in per¬ 
son. Repairing to the Christian camp, he was conducted to 
Constantine, whom he found seated in state, and who ordered 
a chair to be placed for him; but he put it aside, and seated 
himself cross-legged on the ground after the Arab fashion, 
with his scimetar on his thigh and his lance across his knees. 
The curious conference that ensued is minutely narrated by 
that pious Imam and Cadi, the Moslem historian Alwakedi, in 
his chronicle of the conquest of Syria. 

Constantine remonstrated against the invasion, telling Amru 
that the Romans and Greeks and Arabs were brethren, as be¬ 
ing all the children of Noah, although, it was true, the Arabs 
were misbegotten, as being the descendants of Ishmael, the 
son of Hagar, a slave and a concubine, yet being thus breth¬ 
ren, it was sinful for them to war against each other. 

Amru replied that what Constantine had said was true, and 
that the Arabs gloried in acknowledging Ishmael as their pro¬ 
genitor, and envied not the Greeks them forefather Esau, who 
had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. He added that 
their difference related to their religion, upon which ground 
even brothers were justified in warfare. 

Amru proceeded to state that Noah, after the deluge, divided 
the earth into three parts, between his sons Shem, Ham, and 
Japhet, and that Syria was in the portion assigned to Shem, 
which continued down through his descendants Kathan and 
Tesm, and Jodais to Amalek, the father of the Amalekite 
Arabs; but that the Arabs had been pushed from their fertile 
inheritance of Syria into the stony and thorny deserts of 
Arabia. 

“We come now, ” continued Amru, “to claim our ancient 
inheritance, and resume the ancient partition. Take you the 
stones and the thorns and the barren deserts we have occupied, 
and gives us back the pleasant land of Syria, with its groves, 
its pastures, its fair cities and running streams.” 

To this Constantine replied, that the partition was already 
made; that time and possession had confirmed it; and that 
the groves had been planted, and the cities built by the present 
inhabitants. Each, therefore, ought to be contented with the 
lot that had fallen to him. 


328 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


“There are two conditions,” rejoined Amru, “on which the 
land may remain with its present inhabitants. Let them pro¬ 
fess the religion of Islam, or pay tribute to the Caliph, as is due 
from all unbelievers.” 

“ Not so,” said Constantine, “but let each continue tc possess 
the land he has inhabited, and enjoy the produce of his own 
toil, and profess the faith which he believes, in his own con¬ 
science, to be true.” 

Upon this Amru sternly rose. “One only alternative,” said 
he, “remains. Since you obstinately refuse the conditions I 
propose, even as your ancestor Esau refused obedience to his 
mother, let God and the sword decide between us.” 

As he was about to depart, he added: “We will acknowledge 
no kindred with you, while ye continue unbelievers. Ye are the 
children of Esau, we of Ishmael, through whom alone the seal 
and gift of prophecy descended from father to son, from our 
great forefather Adam, until it reached the prophet Mahomet. 
Now Ishmael was the best of the sons of his father, and made 
the tribe of Kenanah, the best tribe of Arabia; and the family 
of Koreish is the best of the tribe of Kenanah; and the children 
of Haschem are the best of the family of Koreish; and Abdallah 
Motalleb, grandsire of Mahomet, was the best of the sons of 
Haschem; and Abdallah, the youngest and best of the thirteen 
sons of Abu Motalleb, was the father of Mahomet (on whom be 
peace!), who was the best and only issue of his sire; and to 
him the angel Gabriel descended from Allah, and inspired him 
with the gift of prophecy.” 

Thus terminated this noted conference, and Amru returned 
to his host. The armies now remained in sight of each other, 
prepared for battle, but without coming to action. One day 
an officer richly arrayed came forth from the Christian camp, 
defying the Moslems to single combat. Several were eager to 
accept the challenge in hopes of gaining such glittering spoil; 
but Amru rebuked their sordid motives. “Let no man fight 
for gain,” said he, “but for the truth. He who loses his life 
fighting for the love of God will have paradise as a reward; but 
he who loses it fighting for any other object will lose his life 
and all that he fights for.” 

i A stripling now advanced, an Arab from Yemen, or Arabia 
the Happy, who had sought these wars not, as he said, for the 
delights of Syria, or the fading enjoyments of this world, but 
to devote himself to the service of God and his apostle. His 
mother and sister had in vain opposed his leaving his peaceful 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


329 

home to seek a life of danger. “If I fall in the service oi 
Allah,” said he, “I shall be a martyr; and the prophet has 
said that the spirits of the martyrs shall dwell in the crops of 
the green birds that eat of the fruits and drink of the rivers of 
paradise. ” Finding their remonstrances of no avail, his mother 
and sister had followed him to the wars, and they now en^ eav- 
ored to dissuade him from fighting with an adversary so much 
his superior in strength and years; but the youthful enthusiast 
was not to be moved. “Farewell, mother and sister!” cried 
he; “we shall meet again by that river of joy provided in, 
paradise for the apostle and his followers.” 

The youth rushed to the combat, but obtained almost in¬ 
stantly the crown of martyrdom he sought. Another and 
another succeeded him, but shared the same fate. Serjabil Ibu 
Hasanah stepped forth. As on a former occasion, in purifying 
the spirit, he had reduced the flesh; and a course of watching 
and fasting had rendered him but little competent to face his 
powerful adversary. After a short combat the Christian bore 
him to the earth, and setting his foot upon his breast, was 
about to take his life, when his own hand was suddenly severed 
from his.body. The prostrate Serjabil looked up with surprise 
at his deliverer; for he was in Grecian attire, and had come 
from the Grecian host. He announced himself as the unhappy 
Tuleia Ibn Chowailed, formerly a pretended prophet and an 
associate of Moseilma. After the death of that impostor, he 
had repented of his false prophecies, and become a Moslem in 
heart, and had sought an opportunity of signalizing his devo¬ 
tion to the Islam cause. 

“Oh brother!” cried Serjabil, “the mercy of Allah is infinite, 
And repentance wipes away all crimes. ” 

Serjabil would now have taken him to the Moslem host, but 
Tuleia hung back; and at length confessed that he would long 
since have joined the standard of Islam, but that he was afraid 
of Khaled, that terror and scourge of false prophets, who had 
killed his friend Moseilma, and who might put him to death 
out of resentment for past misdeeds. Serjabil quieted his fears 
by assuring him that Khaled was not in the Moslem camp; he 
then conducted him to Amru, who received him with great 
favor, and afterward gave him a letter to the Caliph setting 
forth the signal service he had performed, and his sincere de¬ 
votion to the cause of Islam. He was subsequently employed 
in the wars of the Moslems against the Persians. 

The weather was cold and tempestuous, and the Christians, 


330 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


disheartened by repeated rev jrses, began daily to desert their 
colors. The prince Constantine dreaded, with his diminished 
and discouraged troops, to encounter an enemy flushed with 
success, and continually augmenting in force. Accordingly, 
he took advantage of a tempestuous night, and abandoning his 
camp to be plundered by the Moslems, retreated with his army 
to Caesarea, and shut himself up within its walls. Hither ho 
was soon followed by Amru, who laid close siege to the place, 
but the walls were strong, the garrison was numerous, and 
Constantine hoped to be able to hold out until the arrival of 
reinforcements. The tidings of further disasters, and disgraces 
to the imperial cause, however, destroyed this hope; and these 
were brought about by the stratagems and treacheries of that 
arch deceiver Youkenna. After the surrender of Antioch, that 
wily traitor still kept up his pretended devotion to the Chris¬ 
tian cause, and retreated with his band of renegadoes to the 
town of Tripoli, a seaport in Syria, situated on the Mediterra¬ 
nean. Here he was cordially admitted, as his treachery was 
still unknown. Watching his opportunity, he rose with his 
devoted band, seized on the town and citadel without noise or 
tumult, and kept the standard of the cross still flying, while he 
sent secret intelligence of his exploit to Abu Obeidah. Just at 
this time, a fleet of fifty ships from Cyprus and Crete put in 
there, laden with arms and provisions for Constantine’s army. 
Before notice could be given of the posture of affairs, You¬ 
kenna gained possession of the ships, and embarked on board 
of them with his renegadoes and other troops, delivering the 
city of Tripoli into the hands of the force sent by Abu Obeidah 
to receive it. 

Bent on new treacheries, Youkenna now sailed with the fleet 
to Tyre, displaying the Christian flag, and informing the gov¬ 
ernor that he was come with a reinforcement for the army of 
the emperor. He was kindly received, and landed with nine 
hundred of his troops, intending to rise on the garrison in the 
night. One of his own men, however, betrayed the plot, and 
Youkenna and his followers were seized and imprisoned in the 
citadel. 

In the mean time Yezed Ibn Abu Sofian, who had marched 
with two thousand men against Caesarea, but had left Amru 
to subdue it, came with his troops into the neighborhood of 
Tyre, in hopes to find it in possession of Youkenna. The 
governor of the city, despising so slender a force, sallied forth 


MA110MET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 331 

with the greater part of his garrison, and the inhabitants 
mounted on the walls to see the battle. 

It was the fortune of Youkenna, which he derived from his 
consummate skill in intrigue, that his failure and captivity on 
this occasion, as on a former one in the castle of Aazaz, served 
only as a foundation for his success. He contrived to gain 
over a Christian officer named Basil, to whose keeping he and 
the other prisoners were intrusted, and who was already dis¬ 
posed to embrace the Islam faith; and he sent information of 
his plan by a disguised messenger to Yezed, and to those of his 
own followers who remained on board of the flbet. All this 
was the work of a few hours, while the opposing forces were 
preparing for action. 

The battle was hardly begun when Youkenna and his nine 
hundred men, set free by the apostate Basil, and conducted to 
the arsenal, armed themselves and separated in different par¬ 
ties. Some scoured the streets, shouting La ilaha iUlali 1 and 
Alla Achbar! Others stationed themselves at the passages by 
which alone the guard could descend from the walls. Others 
ran to the port, where they were joined by their comrades 
from the fleet, and others threw wide the gates to a detach¬ 
ment of the army of Yezed. All this was suddenly effected, 
and with such co-operation from various points, that the 
place was presently in thejiands of the Moslems. Most of the 
inhabitants embraced the Islam faith; the rest were pillaged 
and made slaves. 

It was the tidings of the loss of Tripoli and Tyre, and of the 
capture of the fleets with its munitions of war, that struck 
dismay into the heart of the prince Constantine, and made 
him quake within the walls of Caesarea. He felt as if Amru 
and his besieging aimy were already within the walls, and, 
taking disgraceful counsel from his fears, and example from 
his father's flight from Antioch, he removed furtively from 
Caesarea with his family and vast treasure, gained promptly a 
convenient port, and set all sail for Constantinople. 

The people of Caesarea finding one morning that the son of 
their sovereign had fled in the night, capitulated with Amru, 
offering to deliver up the city, with all the wealth belonging to 
the family of the late emperor, and two hundred thousand 
pieces of silver, as ransom for their own property. Their 
terms were promptly accepted, Am.ru being anxious to depart 
on the invasion of Egypt. 


332 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


The surrender of Caesarea was followed by the other places 
in the province which had still held out, and thus, after a war 
of six years, the Moslem conquest of Syria was completed, in 
the fifth year of the Caliph Omar, the 29th of the reign of 
the emperor Heraelius, the 17th of the Hegira, and the 639th 
year of our redemption. 

The conquest was followed by a pestilence, one of the cus¬ 
tomary attendants upon war. Great numbers of the people of 
Syria perished, and with them twenty-five thousand of their 
Arabian conquerors. Among the latter was Abu Obeidah, the 
commander-in-chief, then fifty-eight years of age; also Yezed 
Ihn Abu Sofian, Serjabil, and other distinguished generals, so 
that the 18th year of the Hegira became designated as “The 
year of the mortality.” 

In closing this account of the conquest of Syria, we must 
note the fate of one of the most efficient of its conquerors, the 
invincible Khaled. He had never been a favorite of Omar, 
who considered him rash and headlong, arrogant in the ex¬ 
ercise of command, unsparing in the use of the sword, and 
rapacious in grasping the spoils of victory. His brilliant 
achievements in Irak and Syria, and the magnanimity with 
which he yielded the command to Abu Obeidah, and zeal¬ 
ously fought under his standard, had never sufficed to efface 
the prejudice of Omar. 

After the capture of Emessa, which was mainly effected by 
the bravery of Khaled, he received congratulations on all 
hands as the victor. Eschaus, an Arabian poet, sang his ex¬ 
ploits in lofty verse, making him the hero of the whole Syrian 
conquest. Khaled, who was as ready to squander as to grasp, 
rewarded the adulation of the poet with thirty thousand pieces 
of silver. All this, when reported to Omar, excited his quick 
disgust; he was indignant at Khaled for arrogating to himself, 
as he supposed, all the glory of the war; and he attributed the 
lavish reward of the poet to gratified vanity. “Even if the 
money came from his own purse,” said he, “it was shameful 
squandering; and God, says the Koran, loves not a squan¬ 
derer.” 

He now gave faith to a charge made against Khaled of em¬ 
bezzling the spoils set apart for the public treasury, and forth¬ 
with sent orders for him to be degraded from his command in 
presence of the assembled army; it is even said his arms were 
tied behind his back with his turban. 

A rigid examination proved the charge of embezzlement to 


MAlIOlJET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


333 

be unfounded, but Khaled was subjected to a heavy fine. The 
sentence causing great dissatisfaction in the army, the Caliph 
wrote to the commanders: “I have punished Khaled not on 
account of fraud or falsehood, but for his vanity and prodigal¬ 
ity ; paying poets for ascribing to him alone all the successes 
of the holy war. Good and evil come from God, not from 
Khaled!” 

These indignities broke the heart of the veteran, who was 
already infirm from the wounds and hardships of his arduous 
campaigns, and he gradually sank into the grave, regretting 
in his last moments that he had not died in the field of battle. 
He left a name idolized by the soldiery and beloved by his 
kindred; at his sepulture, all the women of his race cut off 
their hair in token of lamentation. When it was ascertained, 
at his death, that instead of having enriched himself by the 
wars, his whole property consisted of his war-horse, his arms, 
and a single slave, Omar became sensible of the injustice he had 
done to his faithful general, and shed tears over his grave. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

INVASION OF EGYPT BY AMRU—CAPTURE OF MEMPHIS—SIEGE AND 
SURRENDER OF ALEXANDRIA—BURNING OF THE ALEXANDRIAN 
LIBRARY. 

A proof of the religious infatuation, or the blind confidence 
In destiny, which hurried the Moslem commanders of those 
days into the most extravagant enterprises, is furnished in 
the invasion of the once proud empire of the Pharaohs, the 
mighty, the mysterious Egypt, with an army of merely five 
thousand men. The Caliph, himself, though he had suggested 
this expedition, seems to have been conscious of its rashness; 
or rather to have been chilled by the doubts of his prime coun¬ 
sellor Otliman; for, while Amru was on the march, he dis¬ 
patched missives after him to the following effect: “If this 
epistle reach thee before thou hast crossed the boundary of 
Egypt, come instantly back; but if it find thee within the 
'Egyptian territory, march on with the blessing of Allah, and 
be assured I will send thee all necessary aid. ” 

The bearer of the letter overtook Amru while yet within the 



334 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


bounds of Syria; that wary general either had secret informa 
tion, or made a shrewd surmise as to the purport of Jiis errand, 
and continued his march across the border without admitting 
him to an audience. Having encamped at the Egyptian village 
of Arish, he received the courier with all due respect, and read 
the letter aloud m the presence of his officers. When he had 
finished, he demanded of those about him whether they were 
in Syria or Egypt. “ In Egypt,” was the reply. “ Then,” said 
Amru, “ we will proceed, with the blessing of Allah, and fulfil 
the commands of the Caliph.” 

The first place to which he laid siege was Farwak, or Pe- 
lusium, situated on the shores of the Mediterranean, on the 
Isthmus which separates that sea from the Arabian Gulf, and 
connects Egypt with Syria and Arabia. It was therefore con¬ 
sidered the key to Egypt. A month’s siege put Amru in pos¬ 
session of the place; he then examined the surrounding country 
with more forethought than was generally manifested by the 
Moslem conquerors, and projected a canal across the Isthmus, 
to connect the waters of the Eed Sea, and the Mediterranean. 
His plan, however, was condemned by the Caliph, as calculated 
to throw open Arabia to a maritime invasion of the Christians. 

Amru now proceeded to Misrah, the Memphis of the ancients, 
and residence of the early Egyptian kings. This city was at 
that time the strongest fortress in Egypt, except Alexandria, 
and still retained much of its ancient magnificence. It stood 
on the western bank of the Nile, above the Delta, and a little 
cast of the Pyramids. The citadel was of great strength, and 
well garrisoned, and had recently been surrounded with a deep 
ditch, into which nails and spikes had been thrown, to impede 
assailants. 

The Arab armies, rarely provided with the engines necessary 
for the attack of* fortified places, generally beleaguered them; 
cut off all supplies; attacked all foraging parties that sallied 
forth, and thus destroyed the garrison in detail, or starved it 
to a surrender. This was the reason of the long duration of 
their sieges. This of Misrah, or Memphis, lasted seven months; 
in the course of which the little army of Amru was much re¬ 
duced by frequent skirmishings. At the end of this time he 
received a reinforcement of four thousand men, sent to him at 
his urgent entreaties by the Caliph. Still his force would have 
been insufficient for the capture of the place, had he not been 
aided by the treachery of its governor, Mokawkas. 

This man, an original Egyptian, or Copt, by birth, and of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


335 


noble rank, was a profound hypocrite. Like most of the Copts, 
he was of the Jacobite sect, who denied the double nature of 
Christ. He had dissembled his sectarian creed, however, and 
deceived the emperor Heraclius by a show of loyalty, so as to 
be made prefect of his native province, and governor of the 
city. Most of the inhabitants of Memphis were' Copts and Ja¬ 
cobite Christians, and held their Greek fellow-citizens, who 
were of the regular Catholic church of Constantinople, in great 
antipathy. 

Mokawkas in the course of his administration had collected, 
by taxes and tribute, an immense amount of treasure, which 
he had deposited in the citadel. He saw that the power of the 
emperor was coming to an end in this quarter, and thought 
the present a good opportunity to provide for his own fortune. 
Carrying on a secret correspondence with the Moslem general, 
he agreed to betray the place into his hands, on condition of 
receiving the treasure as a reward for his treason. He accord- 
.ingly, at an appointed time, removed the greater part of the 
garrison from the citadel to an island in the Nile. The fortress 
was immediately assailed by Amru, at the head of his fresh 
troops, and was easily carried by assault, the Copts rendering 
no assistance. The Greek soldiery, on the Moslem standard 
being hoisted on the citadel, saw through the treachery, and, 
giving up all as lost, escaped in their ships to the main land; 
upon which the prefect surrendered the place by capitulation. 
An annual tribute of two ducats a head was levied on all the in¬ 
habitants of the district, with the exception of old. men, women, 
and boys under the age of sixteen years. It was further con¬ 
ditioned that the Moslem army should be furnished with provis¬ 
ions, for which they would pay, and that the inhabitants of the 
country should, forthwith, build bridges over all the streams 
on the way to Alexandria. It was also agreed that every 
Mussulman travelling through the country should be entitled 
to three days’ hospitality, free of charge. 

The traitor Mokawkas was put in possession of bis ill-gotten 
wealth. He begged of Amru to be taxed with the Copts, and 
always to be enrolled among them; declaring his abhorrence of 
the Greeks and their doctrines; urging Amru to persecute 
them with unremitting violence. He extended his sectarian 
bigotry even into the grave, stipulating that, at his death, he 
should be buried in the Christian Jacobite church of St. John, 
at Alexandria. 

Amru, who was politic as well as brave, seeing the irrecon- 


836 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


eilable hatred of the Coptic or Jacobite Christians to the 
Greeks, showed some favor to that sect, in order to make use 
of them in his conquest of the country. He even prevailed 
upon their patriarch Benjamin to emerge from His desert and 
hold a conference with him; and subsequently declared that 
“ he had never conversed with a Christian priest of more inno¬ 
cent manners or venerable aspect.” This piece of diplomacy 
had its effect, for we are told that all the Copts above and be- 
low Memphis swore allegiance to the Caliph. 

Amru now pressed on for the city of Alexandria, distant 
about one hundred and twenty-five miles. According to stipu¬ 
lation, the people of the country repaired the roads and erected 
bridges to facilitate his march; the Greeks, however, driven 
from various quarters by the progress of their invaders, had 
collected at different posts on the island of the Delta, and the 
channels of the Nile, and disputed with desperate but fruitless 
obstinacy, the onward course of the conquerors. The severest 
check was given at Keram al Shoraik, by the late garrison of 
Memphis, who had fortified themselves there after retreating 
from the island of the Nile. For three days did they maintain 
a gallant conflict with the Moslems, and then retired in good 
order to Alexandria. With all the facilities furnished to them 
on their march, it cost the Moslems two-and-twenty days to 
fight their way to that great city. 

Alexander now lay before them, the metropolis of wealthy 
Egypt, the emporium of the East, a place strongly fortified, 
stored with all the munitions of war, open by sea to all kinds 
of supplies and reinforcements, and garrisoned by Greeks, ag¬ 
gregated from various quarters, w T ho here were to make the. 
last stand for their Egyptian empire. It would seem that noth¬ 
ing short of an enthusiasm bordering on madness could have 
led Amru and his host on an enterprise against this powerfu 
city. 

The Moslem leader, on planting his standard before the place, 
summoned it to surrender on the usual terms, which being 
promptly refused, he prepared for a vigorous siege. The garri¬ 
son did not wait to be attacked, but made repeated sallies, and 
fought with desperate valor. Those who gave greatest annoy¬ 
ance to the Moslems were their old enemies, the Greek troops 
from Memphis. Amru, seeing that the greatest defence was 
from a main tower, or citadel, made a gallant assault upon it, 
and carried it sword in hand. The Greek troops, however, 
rallied to that point from all parts of the city; the Moslems, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


337 


after a furious struggle, gave way, and Amru, his faithful 
slave Werdan, and one of his generals, named Moslema Ibn al 
Mokalled, fighting to the last, were surrounded, overpowered, 
and taken prisoners. 

The Greeks, unaware of the importance of their captives, 
led them before the governor. He demanded of them, haugh¬ 
tily, what was their object in thus overrunning the world, and 
disturbing the quiet of peaceable neighbors. Amru made the 
usual reply, that they came to spread the faith of Islam • and 
that it was their intention, before they laid by the sword, to 
make the Egyptians either converts or tributaries. The bold¬ 
ness of his answer and the loftiness of his demeanor awakened 
the suspicions of the governor, who, supposing him to be a war¬ 
rior of note among the Arabs, ordered one of his guards to 
strike off his head. Upon this Werdan, the slave, understand¬ 
ing the Greek language, seized his master by the collar, and, 
giving him a buffet on the cheek, called him an impudent dog, 
and ordered him to hold his peace, and let his superiors speak. 
Moslema, perceiving the meaning of the slave, now interposed, 
and made a plausible speech to the governor, telling him that 
Amru had thoughts of raising the siege, having received a 
letter to that effect from the Caliph, who intended to send am¬ 
bassadors to treat for peace, and assuring the governor that, if 
permitted to depart, they would make a favorable report to 
Amru. 

The governor, who, if Arabian chronicles may be believed 
on this point, must have been a man of easy faith, ordered the 
prisoners to be set at liberty; but the shouts of the besieging 
army on the safe return of their general soon showed him how 
completely he had been duped. 

But scanty details of the siege of Alexandria have reached 
the Christian reader, yet it was one of the longest, most ob¬ 
stinately contested and sanguinary, in the whole course of the 
Moslem wars. It endured fourteen months with various suc¬ 
cess; the Moslem army was repeatedly reinforced, and lost 
twenty-three thousand men; at length their irresistible ardor 
and perseverance prevailed; the capital of Egypt was con¬ 
quered, and the Greek inhabitants were dispersed in all direc¬ 
tions. Some retreated in considerable bodies into the interior 
of the country, and fortified themselves in strongholds; others 
took refuge in the ships, and put to sea. 

Amru, on taking possession of the city, found it nearly 
abandoned; he prohibited his troops from plundering; and 


388 


11 AIIO MIST AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


leaving a small garrison to guard" the place, hastened with his 
main army in pursuit of the fugitive Greeks. In the mean time 
the ships which had taken off a part of the garrison were still 
lingering on the coast, and tidings reached them that the Mos¬ 
lem general had departed, and had left the captured city nearly 
defenceless. They immediately made sail back for Alexandria, 
and entered the port in the night. The Greek soldiers surprised 
the sentinels, got possession of the city, and put most of the 
Moslems they found there to the sword. 

Amru was in full pursuit of the Greek fugitives when he 
heard of the recapture of the city. Mortified at his own neg¬ 
ligence in leaving so rich a conquest with so slight a guard, he 
returned in all haste, resolved to retake it by storm. The 
Greeks, however, had fortified themselves strongly in the 
castle, and made stout resistance. Amru was obliged, there¬ 
fore, to besiege it a second time, but the siege was short. The 
castle was carried by assault; many of the Greeks were cut to 
pieces, the rest escaped once more to their ships, and now gave 
up the capital as lost. All this occurred in the nineteenth year 
of the Hegira, and the year 640 of the Christian era. 

On this second capture of the city by force of arms, and 
without capitulation, the troops were clamorous to be permit¬ 
ted to plunder. Amru again checked their rapacity, and com¬ 
manded that all persons and property in the place should re¬ 
main inviolate, until the will of the Caliph could be known. 
So perfect was his command over his troops, that not the most 
trivial article was taken. His letter to the Caliph shows what 
must have been the population and splendor of Alexandria, 
and the luxury and effeminacy of its inhabitants, at the time 
of the Moslem conquest. It states the city to have contained 
four thousand palaces, five thousand baths, four hundred thea¬ 
tres and places of amusement, twelve thousand gardeners 
which supply it with vegetables, and forty thousand tributary 
Jews. It was impossible, he said, to do justice to its riches, 
and magnificence. He had hitherto held it sacred from plun¬ 
der, but his troops, having won it by force of arms, considered 
themselves entitled to the spoils of victory. 

The Caliph Omar, in reply, expressed a high sense of his im¬ 
portant services, but reproved him for even mentioning the 
desire of the soldiery to plunder so rich a city, one of the great¬ 
est emporiums of the East. . He charged him, therefore, most 
rigidly to watch over the rapacious propensities of his men; to 
prevent all pillage, violence, and waste; to collect and make 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


339 


out an account of all moneys, jewels, household furniture, and 
everything else that was valuable, to be appropriated toward 
defraying the expenses of this war of the faith. He ordered 
the tribute also, collected in the conquered country, to be 
treasured up at Alexandria, for the supplies of the Moslem 
troops. 

The surrender of all Egypt followed the capture of its capital. 
A tribute of two ducats was laid on every male of mature age, 
besides a tax on all lands in proportion to their value, anfl the 
revenue which resulted to the Caliph is estimated at twelve 
millions of ducats. 

We have shown that Amru was a poet in his youth; and 
throughout all his campaigns he manifested an intelligent and 
inquiring spirit, if not more highly informed, at least more 
liberal and extended in its views than was usual among the 
early Moslem conquerors. He delighted, in his hours of 
leisure, to converse with learned men, and acquire through 
their means such knowledge as had been denied to him by 
the deficiency of his education. Such a companion he found 
at Alexandria in a native of the place, a Christian of the sect 
of the Jacobites, eminent for his philological researches, his 
commentaries on Moses and Aristotle, and his laborious treat¬ 
ises of various kinds, surnamed Philoponus from his love of 
Study, but commonly knowm by the name of John the Gram¬ 
marian. An intimacy soon arose between the Arab conqueror 
and the Christian philologist; an intimacy honorable to Amru, 
but destined to be lamentable in its result to the cause of let¬ 
ters. In an evil hour, John the Grammarian, being encour¬ 
aged by the favor shown him by the Arab general, revealed to 
him a treasure hitherto unnoticed, or rather unvalued, by the 
Moslem conquerors. This was a vast collection of books or 
manuscripts, since renowned in history as the Alexandrian 
Library. Perceiving that in taking an account of everything 
valuable in the city, and sealing up all its treasures, Amru 
had taken no notice of the books, John solicited that they 
might be given to him. Unfortunately, the learned zeal of 
the Grammarian gave a consequence to the books in the eyes 
of Amru, and made him scrupulous of giving them away with¬ 
out permission of the Caliph. He forthwith wrote to Omar, 
stating the merits of John, and requesting • to know whether 
the books might be given to him. The reply of Omar was 
laconic, but fatal. “The contents of those books,” said he, 
“are in conformity with the Koran, or they are not. If they 


340 


MAHOMET AMD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


are, the Koran is sufficient without them; if they are not, they 
are pernicious. Let them, therefore, be destroyed. ” 

Amru, it is said, obeyed the order punctually. The books 
and manuscripts were distributed as fuel among the five thorn 
sand baths of the city; but so numerous were they that it took 
six months to consume them. This act of barbarism, recorded 
by Abulpharagius, is considered somewhat doubtful by Gib¬ 
bon, in consequence of its not being mentioned by two of the 
most ancient chroniclers, Elmacin in his Saracenic history, and 
Eutychius in his annals, the latter of whom was patriarch of 
Alexandria, and has detailed the conquest of that city. It is 
inconsistent, too, with the character of Amru, as a poet and a 
man of superior intelligence; and it has recently been re¬ 
ported, we know not on what authority, that many of the 
literary treasures thus said to have been destroyed, do actu¬ 
ally exist in Constantinople. Their destruction, however, is 
generally credited and deeply deplored by historians. Amru, 
as a man of genius and intelligence, may have grieved at the 
order of the Caliph; while, as a loyal subject and faithful sob 
dier, he felt bound to obey it.* 

The fall of Alexandria decided the fate of Egypt and like¬ 
wise that of the emperor Heraclius. He was already afflicted 
with a dropsy, and took the loss of his Syrian, and now that of 
his Egyptian dominions, so much to heart, that he underwent 
a paroxysm, which ended in his death, about seven weeks after 
the loss of his Egyptian capital. He was succeeded by his son 
Constantine. 

While Amru was successfully extending his conquests, a 
great dearth and famine fell upon all Arabia, insomuch that 
the Caliph Omar had to call upon him for supplies from the 
fertile plains of Egypt; whereupon Amru dispatched such a 
train of camels laden with grain, that it is said, when the first 
of the line had reached the city of Medina, the last had not yet 
left the land of Egypt. But this mode of conveyance proving 
too tardy, at the command of the Caliph he dug a canal of 


* The Alexandrian Library was formed by Ptolemy Soter, and placed in a build¬ 
ing called the Bruchion. It was augmented in successive reigns to 400.000 volumes, 
and an additional 300,000 volumes were placed in a temple called the Serapeon. 
The Bruchion, with the books it contained, was burnt in the war of Cffisar, but the 
Serapeon Avas preserved. Cleopatra, it is said, added to it the library of Pergamas, 
given to her by Marc Antony, consisting of 200.000 volumes. It sustained repeated 
injuries during various subsequent revolutions, but was always restored to its 
ancient splendor, and numerous additions made to it. Such was its state at the 
capture of Alexandria by the Moslems. 




MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


341 


communication from the Nile to the Red Sea, a distance of. 
eighty miles, by which provisions might be conveyed to the 
Arabian shores. This canal had been commenced by Trajan, 
the Roman emperor. 

The able and indefatigable Amru went on in this manner, 
executing the commands and fulfilling the wishes of the 
Caliph, and governed the country he had conquered with 
such sagacity and justice that he rendered himself one of the 
most worthily renowned among the Moslem generals. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

ENTERPRISES OF THE MOSLEMS IN PERSIA—DEFENCE OF THE 
KINGDOM BY QUEEN ARZE3IIA—BATTLE OF THE BRIDGE. 

ITor the sake of perspicuity, we have recorded the Moslem 
conquests in Syria and Egypt in a continued narrative, with¬ 
out pausing to notice events which were occurring at the same 
time in other quarters; we now recede several years to take up 
the course of affairs in Persia, from the time that Khaled, in 
the thirteenth year of the Hegira, in obedience to the orders of 
Abu Beker, left his victorious army on the banks of the Eu¬ 
phrates, to take the general command in Syria. The victories 
of Khaled had doubtless been owing in part to the distracted 
state of the Persian empire. In the course of an inconsidera¬ 
ble number of years, the proud sceptre of the Khosrus had 
passed from hand to hand; Khosru II., surnamed Parviz, hav¬ 
ing been repeatedly defeated by Heraclius, was deposed in 
628, by a party of his nobles, headed by his own son Siroes (or 
Shiruyah), and was put to death by the latter in a vault under 
the palace, among the treasures he had amassed. To secure 
possession of the throne, Siroes followed up the parricide by 
the massacre of seventeen of his brothers. It was not ambition 
alone that instigated these crimes. He was enamored of a 
sultana in the harem of his father, the matchless Shireen. 
While yet reeking with his father’s blood he declared his pas¬ 
sion to her. She recoiled from him with horror, and when he 
would have used force, gave herself instant death to escape 
from his embraces. The disappointment of his passion, the 
upbraidings of his sisters for the murders of their father and 



342 


MAHOMET ANT HIS SUCCESSORS . 


their brothers, and the stings of his own conscience, threw 
Siroes into a moody melancholy, and either caused, or added 
acuteness to a malady, of which he died in the course of eight 
months. 

His infant son Ardisheer was placed on the throne about the 
end of 628, but was presently slain, and the throne usurped by 
Sheriyar, a Persian noble, who was himself killed after a very 
short reign. Turan-Docht, a daughter of Khosru Parviz, was 
now crowned and reigned eighteen months, when she was set 
aside by her cousin Shah Shenandeh, who was himself deposed 
by the nobles, and Arzemi-Docht * or Arzemia, as the name is 
commonly given, another daughter of Khosru Parviz, was 
placed on the throne in the year 632 of the Christian era. The 
Persian seat of government, which had been often changed, 
was at this time held in the magnificent city of Madain, or 
Madayn, on the Tigris, where was the ancient Ctesiphon. 

Arzemia was distinguished alike for masculine talents and 
feminine beauty; she had been carefully instructed under her 
father Khosru, and had acquired sad experience, during the 
series of conspiracies and. assassinations which had beset the 
throne for the last four years. Rejecting from her council 
the very traitors who had placed the crown upon her head, she 
undertook to wield the sceptre without the aid of a vizir, there¬ 
by giving mortal offence to the most powerful nobles of her 
realm. She was soon called upon to exert her masculine spirit 
by the continued aggressions of the Moslems. 

The reader will recollect that the Moslem army on the Eu¬ 
phrates, at the departure of Khaled, was left under the com¬ 
mand of Mosenna Ibn Haris (or Mutlienna Ibn Harith, as the 
name is sometimes rendered).' On the accession of Omar to 
the Caliphat, he appointed Mosenna emir or governor of 
Sewad, the country recently conquered by Khaled, tying 
about the lower part of the Euphrates and the Tigris, forming 
a portion of the Persian province of Irak-Arabi. This was in 
compliance with the wishes and intentions of Abu Beker; 
though Omar does not appear to have had great confidence in 
the military talents of Mosenna, the career of conquest having 
languished in his hands since the departure of Khaled. He 
accordingly sent Abu Obeidah Sakfi, one of the most impor¬ 
tant disciples of the prophet, at the head of a thousand chosen 


* Docfat or Pokht, diminutive of dukhter, signifies the unmarried or maiden 
state. 





MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


343 


men, to reinforce the army under Mosenna, and to take the 
lead in military enterprises.* He was accompanied by Sabit 
Xbn Kais, one of the veterans of the battle of Beder. 

The Persian queen, hearing of the advance of the Moslem 
army thus reinforced, sent an able general, Rustam Ibn 
Ferukh-Zad (or Feruchsad), with thirty thousand more, to 
repel them. Rustam halted on the confines of Irak, and sent 
forward strong detachments under a general named Dsehaban, 
and a Persian prince named Narsi (or Narsis). These were so 
roughly handled by the Moslems that Rustam found it neces¬ 
sary to hasten with his main force to their assistance. He ar¬ 
rived too late; they had been severally defeated and put to 
flight, and the whole country of Sewad was in the hands of the 
Moslems. 

Queen Arzemia, still more aroused to the danger of her king¬ 
dom, sent Rustam a reinforcement led by Behman Dschadu, 
surnamed the Veiled, from the shaggy eyebrows which over¬ 
shadowed his visage. He brought with him three thousand 
men and thirty elephants. These animals, of little real utility 
in warfare, were formidable in the eyes of those unaccustomed 
to them, and were intended to strike terror into the Arabian 
troops. One of them was the white elephant Mahmoud, 
famous for having been ridden by Abraha, the Ethiopian king, 
in foregone times, when he invaded Mecca, and assailed the 
Caaba. It was considered a harbinger of victory, all the en¬ 
terprises in which it had been employed having proved suc¬ 
cessful. 

With Behman, the heavy-browed, came also the standard of 
Kaoh, the sacred standard. It was originally the leathern 
apron of the blacksmith Kaoh, which he reared as a banner 
when he roused the people, and delivered Persia from the 
tyranny of Sohak. It had been enlarged from time to time 
with costly silk, embroidered with gold, until it was twenty- 
two feet long and fifteen broad; and was decorated with gear 
of inestimable value. With this standard the fate of the 
kingdom was believed, by superstitious Persians, to be con¬ 
nected. 

The Moslem forces, even with the reinforcement brought by 
Abu Obeidah Sakfi, did not exceed nine thousand in number; 


* This Abu Obeidah has sometimes been confounded with the general of the 
same name, who commanded in Syria; the latter, however, was Abu Obeidah Ibn 
Aljerah (the son of Aljerah). 



344 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the Persians, encamped near the ruins of Babylon, were vastly 
superior. It was the counsel of Mosenna and the veteran 
Sabit, that they should fall back into the deserts, and remain 
encamped there until reinforcements could be obtained from 
the Caliph. Abu Obeidah, however, was for a totally different 
course. He undervalued the prowess of the Persians; he had 
heard Mosenna censured for want of enterprise, and Khalcd 
extolled to the skies for his daring achievements in this quar¬ 
ter. He was determined to emulate them, to cross the Euphra¬ 
tes and attack the Persians in their encampment. In vain 
Mosenna and Sabit remonstrated. He caused a bridge of boats 
to be thrown across the Euphrates, and led the way to the op¬ 
posite bank. His troops did not follow with their usual alac¬ 
rity, for they felt the rashness of the enterprise. While they 
were yet crossing the bridge, they were severely galled by a 
body of archers, detached in the advance by Rustam; and were 
met at the head of the bridge by that warrior with his van¬ 
guard of cavalry. 

The conflict was severe. The banner of Islam passed from 
hand to hand of seven brave champions, as one after another 
fell in its defence. The Persians were beaten back, but now 
arrived the mean body of the army with the thirty elephants. 
Abu Obeidah breasted fearlessly the storm of war which he 
had so rashly provoked. He called to his men not to fear the 
elephants, but to strike at their trunks. He himself severed, 
with a blow of his scimetar, the trunk of the famous white ele¬ 
phant, but in so doing his foot slipped, he fell to the earth, and 
was trampled to death by the enraged animal. 

The Moslems, disheartened by his loss, and overwhelmed by 
numbers, endeavored to regain the bridge. The enemy had 
thrown combustibles into the boats on which it was construct¬ 
ed, and had set them on fire. Some of the troops were driven 
into the water and perished there; the main body retreated 
along the river, protected in the rear by Mosenna, who now 
displayed the skill of an able general, and kept the enemy at 
bay until a slight bridge could be hastily thrown across another 
part of the river. He was the last to cross the bridge, and 
caused it to be broken behind him. 

Four thousand Moslems were either slain or drowned in this 
rash affair; two thousand fled to Medina, and about three 
thousand remained with Mosenna, who encamped and in¬ 
trenched them, and sent a fleet courier to the Caliph, entreat¬ 
ing instant aid. Nothing saved this remnant of the army 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


345 


from utter destruction but a dissension which took place be¬ 
tween the Persian commanders, who, instead of following up 
their victory, returned to Madayn, the Persian capital. 

This was the severest and almost the only severe check that 
Moslem audacity had for a long time experienced. It took 
place in the 13th year of the Hegira, and the year 634 of the 
Christian era, and was long and ruefully remembered by the 
Arabs as the battle of “El Jisir,” or The Battle of the Bridge. 


CHAPTER XXYI. 

MOSENNA IBN HARIS RAVAGES THE COUNTRY ALONG THE EU¬ 
PHRATES—DEATH OF ARZEMIA—YEZDEGIRD III. RAISED TO THE 
THRONE—SAAD IBN ABU WAKKAS GIVEN THE GENERAL COM¬ 
MAND-DEATH OF MOSENNA—EMBASSY TO YEZDEGIRD—ITS RE¬ 
CEPTION. 

Having, received moderate reinforcements, Mosenna again 
took the field in Arab style, hovering about the confines of 
Babylonia, and sending detachments in different directions to 
plunder and lay waste the country bordering on the Euphra¬ 
tes. It was an instance of the vicissitude of human affairs, 
and the instability of earthly grandeur, that this proud region, 
which once held the world in awe, should be thus marauded 
and insulted by a handful of predatory Arabs. 

To check their ravages, Queen Arzemia sent out a general 
named Mahran, with twelve thousand chosen cavalry. Mo¬ 
senna, hearing of their approach, called in his plundering 
parties and prepared for battle. The two hosts met near 
Hirah, on the borders of the desert. Mosenna, who in the 
battle of the bridge had been the last man to retire, was now 
the foremost man to charge. In the fury of the fight he made 
his way, almost alone, into the heart of the Persian army, and 
with difficulty fought his way out again and back to his own 
men. The Persians, as we have noted, were chosen troops, 
and fought with unusual spirit. The Moslems, in some parts 
of the field, began to give way. Mosenna galloped up and 
threw himself before them; he expostulated, he threatened, he 
tore his beard in the agony of his feelings; he succeeded in 
leading them back to the fight, which endured from noon until 



346 MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 

sunset, and still continued doubtful. At the close of the day 
Mosenna encountered Mahran hand to hand, in the midst of 
his guards, and received a powerful blow, which might have 
proved fatal but for his armor. In return he smote the Persian 
commander with his scimetar just where the neck joins to the 
shoulder, and laid him dead. The Persians, seeing their 
leader fall, took to flight, nor stopped until they reached Ma- 
dayn. 

The Moslems next made a plundering expedition to Bagdad, 
at that time a mere village, but noted for a great fair, the 
resort of merchants from various parts of the East. An Arab 
detachment pounced upon it at the time of the fair, and car¬ 
ried off many captives and immense booty. 

The tidings of the defeat of Mahran and the plundering of the 
fair spread consternation in the Persian capital. The nobles 
and priests, who had hitherto stood in awe of the spirit of the 
queen, now raised a tumult. “ These are the fruits,” said they, 
“ of having a woman to reign over us.” 

The fate of the beautiful Arzemia was hastened by private 
revenge. Faruch-Zad, one of the most powerful of her nobles, 
and governor of Khorassan, incited by love and ambition, had 
aspired to her hand. At first, it is said, she appeared to favor 
his addresses, fearing to provoke his enmity, but afterward 
slighted them; whereupon he entered the palace by night, and 
attempted to get possession of her person. His attempt failed, 
and, by her command, he received instant death at the hands 
of her guards, accompanied by some indignities. 

His son, Rustam, who had been left by him in the govern- 
ment of Khorassan, hastened, at the head of an armed force, 
to avenge his death. He arrived in the height of the public 
discontent; entered the city without opposition, stormed the 
palace, captured the young and beautiful queen, subjected her 
to degrading outrages, and put her to death in the most cruel 
manner. She was the sixth of the usurping sovereigns, and 
had not yet reigned a year. 

A remaining son of Khosru Parviz was now brought for¬ 
ward and placed on the slippery throne, but was poisoned 
within forty days, some say by his courtiers, others by a slave. 

The priests and nobles now elevated a youth about fifteen 
years of age to this perilous dignity. He was a grandson of 
Khosru Parviz, and had been secluded, during the late period 
of anarchy and assassination, in the city of Istakar, the an¬ 
cient Persepolis. He is known by the name of Yezdegird III.. 


MAHOMET AND J1IS SUCCESSORS. 


34 ? 


though some historians call him Hermisdas IV., from his 
family, instead of his personal appellation. He was of a good 
natural disposition, but werk and irresolute, and apt, from 
his youth and inexperience, to become a passive instrument in 
the hands of the faction which had placed him on the throne. 

One of the first measures of the new reign was to assemble a 
powerful army and place it under the command of Rustam, 
the same general who had so signally revenged the death of his 
father. It was determined, by a signal blow, to sweep the 
Arabian marauders from the land. 

Omar, on his part, hearing of the changes and warlike prep¬ 
arations in the Persian capital, made a hasty levy of troops, 
and would have marched in person to carry the war into the 
heart of Persia. It was with great difficulty he was dissuaded 
from this plan by his discreet counsellors, Othman and Ali, 
and induced to send in bis place Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas. This 
was a zealous soldier of the faith who used to boast that he 
was the first who had shed the blood of the unbelieving, and, 
moreover, that the prophet, in the first holy war, had in¬ 
trusted to him the care of his household during his absence, 
saying, “To you, oh Saad, who are to me as my father and my 
mother, I confide my family.” To have been a favored and 
confidential companion of the prophet was fast growing to be 
a title of great distinction among the faithful. 

Saad was invested with the general command of the forces 
in Persia; and Mosenna, though his recent good conduct and 
signal success entitled him to the highest consideration, was 
ordered to serve under him. 

Saad set out from Medina with an army of but six or seven 
thousand men; among these, however, Avere one thousand 
well-tried soldiers who had followed the prophet in his cam¬ 
paigns, and one hundred of the veterans of Beder. They were 
led on also by some of the most famous champions of the faith. 
The army was joined on its march by recruits from all quar¬ 
ters, so that by the time it joined the troops under Mosenna it 
amounted to upward of thirty thousand men. 

Mosenna died three days after the arrival of his successor in 
the camp; the cause and nature of his death are not mentioned. 
He left behind him a good name, and a wife remarkable for 
her beauty. The widow was easily brought to listen to the 
addresses of Saad, who thus succeeded to Mosenna in his matri¬ 
monial as well as his military capacity. 

The Persian force under Rustam lay encamped at Kadesia 


148 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


(or KmMesiyah), on the frontier of Sawad or Irak-Arabi, and 
was vastly superior in numbers to the Moslems. Saad sent 
expresses to the Caliph entreating reinforcements. He was 
promised them, but exhorted in the mean time to doubt noth¬ 
ing ; never to regard the number of the foe, but to think always 
that he was fighting under the eye of the Caliph. He was in¬ 
structed, however, before commencing hostilities, to send a 
delegation to Yezdegird inviting him to embrace the faith. 

Saad accordingly sent several of his most discreet and vete¬ 
ran officers on this mission. They repaired to the magnificent 
city of Madayn, and were ushered through the sumptuous halls 
and saloons of the palace of the Khosrus, crowded with guards 
and attendants all richly arrayed, into the presence of the 
youthful monarch, whom they found seated in state on a 
throne, supported by silver columns, and surrounded by the 
dazzling splendor of an oriental court. 

The appearance of the Moslem envoys, attired in simple 
Arab style, in the striped garments of Yemen, amidst the gor¬ 
geous throng of nobles arrayed in jewels and embroidery, was 
but little calculated to inspire deference in a young and incon¬ 
siderate prince, brought up in pomp and luxury, and accus¬ 
tomed to consider dignity inseparable from splendor. He had 
no doubt, also, been schooled for the interview by his crafty 
counsellors. 

The audience opened by a haughty demand on his part, 
through his interpreter, as to the object of their embassy. 
Upon this, one of their number, Na’man Ibn Muskry, set forth 
the divine mission of the prophet and his dying command to 
enforce his religion by the sword, leaving no peaceable alterna¬ 
tive to unbelievers but conversion or tribute. He concluded 
by inviting the king to embrace the faith; if not, to consent to 
become a tributary; if he should refuse both, to prepare for 
battle. 

Yezdegird restrained his indignation, and answered in words 
which had probably been prepared for him. “You Arabs,” 
said he, “have hitherto been known to us by report, as wan 
derers of the desert; your food dates, and sometimes lizards 
and serpents; your drink brackish water; your garments 
coarse hair-cloth. Some of you who by chance have wandered 
into our realms have found sweet water, savory food, and soft 
raiment. They have carried back word of the same to their 
brethren in the desert, and now you come in swarms to rob us 
of our goods and our very land. Ye are like the starving fox r 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


349 


to whom the husbandman afforded shelter in his vineyard, and 
who in return brought a troop of his brethren to devour his 
grapes. Receive from my generosity whatever your wants 
require; load your camels with corn and dates, and depart in 
peace to your native land; but if you tarry in Persia, beware 
the fate of the fox who was slain by the husbandman.” 

The most aged of the Arab envoys, the Sheikh Mukair Ibn 
Zarrarah, replied with great gravity and decorum, and an unal¬ 
tered countenance. “ Oh king! all thou hast said of the Arabs 
is most true. The green lizard of the desert was their some¬ 
time food; the brackish water of wells them drink; their gar¬ 
ments were of hair-cloth, and they buried their infant daugh¬ 
ters to restrain the increase of their tribes. All this was in the 
days of ignorance. They knew not good from evil. They were 
guilty, and they suffered. But Allah in his mercy sent his 
apostle Mahomet, and his sacred Koran among them. He ren¬ 
dered them wise and valiant. He commanded them to war 
with infidels until all should be converted to the true faith. 
On his behest we come. All we demand of thee is to acknowl¬ 
edge that there is no God but God, and that Mahomet is his 
apostle, and to pay from thy income the customary contribu¬ 
tion of the Zacat, paid by all true believers, in charity to the 
poor, and for the support of the family of the prophet. Do 
this, and not a Moslem shall enter the Persian dominions with¬ 
out thy leave; but if thou refuse it, and refuse to pay the tri¬ 
bute exacted from all unbelievers, prepare for the subjugation 
of the sword.” 

The forbearance of Yezdegird was at an end. “Were it not 
unworthy of a great Padischah,” said he, “ to put ambassadors 
to death, the sword should be the only tongue with which I 
would reply to your insolence. Away! ye robbers of the lands 
of others! take with ye a portion of the Persian soil ye crave.” 
So saying, he caused sacks of earth to be bound upon their 
shoulders; to be delivered by them to their chiefs as symbols 
of the graves they would be sure to find at Kadesia. 

When beyond the limits of the city, the envoys transferred 
the sacks of earth to the backs of their camels, and returned 
with them to Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas, shrewdly interpreting 
into a good omen what had been intended by the Persian mon¬ 
arch as a scornful taunt. “Earth,” said they, “is the emblem 
of empire. As surely, oh Saad, as we deliver thee these sacks 
of earth, so surely will Allah deliver the empire of Persia into 
the hands of true believers.” 


350 


MAHGMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BATTLE OF K AD ESI A. 

The hostile armies came in presence of each other cn the 
plains of Kadesia (or Kadesiyah), adjacent to a canal derived 
from the Euphrates. The huge mass of the Persian army 
would have been sufficient to bear down the inferior number 
of the Moslems, had it possessed the Grecian or Roman disci¬ 
pline ; but it was a tumultuous multitude, unwieldy from its 
military pomp, and encumbered by its splendid trappings. 
The Arabs, on the contrary, were veteran skirmishers of the 
desert; light and hardy horsemen; dexterous with the bow and 
lance, and skilled to wheel and retreat, and to return again to 
the attack. Many individual acts of prowess took place be¬ 
tween champions of either army, who dared each other to 
single combat in front of the hosts when drawn out in battle 
array. The costly armor of the Persians, wrought with gold, 
and their belts or girdles studded with gems, made them rich 
prizes to their Moslem victors; while the Persians, if victorious, 
gained nothing from the rudely clad warriors of the desert but 
honor and hard blows. 

Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas was in an unfortunate plight for a 
leader of an army on such a momentous occasion. He was 
grievously afflicted with boils in his reins, so that he sat on his 
horse with extreme difficulty. Still he animated his troops by 
his presence, and gave the tekbir or battle-cry—Allah Aclibar! 

The Persian force came on with great shouts, their elephants 
in the van. The horses of the Moslem cavalry recoiled at sight 
of the latter, and became unmanageable. A great number of 
the horsemen dismounted, attacked the unwieldy animals 
with their swords, and drove them back upon their own host. 
Still the day went hard with the'Moslems; their force being so 
inferior, and their general unable to take the lead and mingle 
in the battle. The arrival of a reinforcement from Syria put 
them in new heart, and they fought on until the approach of 
night, when both parties desisted and drew off to their encamp¬ 
ments. Thus ended the first day’s fight, which the Persians 
called the battle of Armatli; but the Moslems, The Day of Suc¬ 
cor, from the timely arrival of reinforcements. 

On the following morning the armies drew out again in bat- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


351 


tie array, but no general conflict took place. Saad was unable 
to mount his horse and lead his troops into action, and the 
Persians, aware of the reinforcements received by the Mos¬ 
lems, were not disposed to provoke a battle. The day passed 
in light skirmishes and single combats between the prime war 
riors of either host, who defied each other to trials of skill and 
prowess. These combats, of course, were desperate, and com¬ 
monly cost the life of one, if not both of the combatants. 

Saad overlooked the field from the shelter of a tent, where 
he sat at a repast witli his beautiful bride beside him. Her 
heart swelled with griof at seeing so many gallant Moslems 
laid low; a thought of the valiant husband she had lost passed 
across her mind, and the unwary ejaculation escaped her, 
“Alas! Mosenna Ibn Haris, where art thou?” Saad was stung 
to the quick by what he conceived a reproach on his courage 
or activity, and in the heat of the moment struck her on the 
face with his dagger. “To-morrow,” muttered he to himself, 
“I will mount my horse.” 

In the night he secretly sent out a detachment in the direc¬ 
tion of Damascus, to remain concealed until the two armies 
should be engaged on the following day, and then to come 
with banners displayed, and a great sound of drum and trum¬ 
pet, as though they were a reinforcement hurrying to the field 
of action. 

The morning dawned, but still, to his great mortification, 
Saad was unable to sit upon his horse, and had to entrust the 
conduct of the battle to one of his generals. It was a day of 
bloody and obstinate conflict; and from the tremendous shock 
of the encountering hosts was celebrated among the Arabs as 
“ The day of the Concussion.” 

The arrival of the pretended reinforcement inspirited the 
Moslems, who were ignorant of the stratagem, and dismayed 
the enemy. Rustam urged on his elephants to break down the 
Arab host, but they had become familiar with those animals, 
and attacked them so vigorously that, as before, they turned 
upon their own employers and trampled them down in their 
unwieldy flight from the field. 

The battle continued throughout the day with varying for¬ 
tune; nor did it cease at nightfall, for Rustam rode about 
among his troops urging them to fight until morning. That 
night was called by some the night of delirium; for in the dark 
and deadly struggle the combatants struck at random, and 
often caught each other by the beard; by others it was called 


352 


MAHOMET AXD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the night of howling and lamentation, from the cries of the 
wounded. 

The battle ceased not even at the dawning, but continued 
until the heat of the day. A whirlwind of dust hid the armies 
from each other for a time, and produced confusion on the 
field, but it aided the Moslems, as it blew in the faces of the 
enemy. During a pause in the conflict, Rustam, panting with 
heat and fatigue, and half blinded with dust, took shelter from 
the sun under a tent which had been pitched near the water, 
and was surrounded by camels laden with treasure, and with the 
luxurious furniture of the camp. A gust of wind whirled the 
tent into the water. He then threw himself upon the earth in 
the shade of one of the camels. A band of Arab soldiers came 
upon him by surprise. One of them, Hellal Ibn Alkameh by 
name, in his eagerness for plunder, cut the cords which bound 
the burden on the camel. A package of silver fell upon Rustam 
and broke his spine. In his agony he fell or threw himself into 
the water, but was drawn out by the leg, his head stricken off, 
and elevated on the lance of Hellal. The Persians recognized 
the bloody features, and fled amain, abandoning to the victors 
their camp, with all its rich furniture and baggage, and scores 
of beasts of burden, laden with treasure and with costly gear. 
The amount of booty was incalculable. 

The sacred standard, too, was among the spoils. To the sol¬ 
dier who had captured it, thirty thousand pieces of gold are 
said to have been paid at Saad’s command; and the jewels 
with which it was studded were put with the other booty, to 
be shared according to rule. Hellal, too, who brought the 
head of Rustam to Saad, was allowed as a reward to strip the 
body of his victim. Never did Arab soldier make richer spoil. 
The garments of Rustam were richly embroidered, and he 
wore two gorgeous belts, ornamented with jewels, one worth 
a thousand pieces of gold, the other seventy thousand dirhems 
of silver. 

Thirty thousand Persians are said to have fallen in this bat¬ 
tle, and upward of seven thousand Moslems. The loss most 
deplored by the Persians was that of their sacred banner, with 
which they connected the fate of the realm. 

This battle took place in the fifteenth year of the Hegira, and 
the six hundred and thirty-sixth year of the Christian era, 
and is said to be as famous among the Arabs as that of Arbela 
among the Greeks. 

Complaints having circulated among the troops that Saad 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


353 

6ad not mingled in the fight, he summoned several of the old 
men to his tent, and, stripping himself, showed the boils by 
which he was so grievously afflicted; after which there were 
no further expressions of dissatisfaction. It is to be hoped he 
found some means, equally explicit, of excusing himself to hi? 
beautiful bride for the outrage he had committed upon her. , 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

FOUNDING OF BASSORA—CAPTURE OF THE PERSIAN CAPITAL-^ 
FLIGHT OF YEZDEGIRD TO HOLWAN. 

After the signal victory of Kadesia, Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas, 
by command of the Caliph, remained for some months in the 
neighborhood, completing the subjugation of the conquered 
country, collecting tax and tribute, and building mosques in 
every direction for the propagation of the faith. About the 
same time Omar caused the city of Basra, or Bassora, to be 
founded in the lower part of Irak Arabi, on that great river 
formed by the junction of the Euphrates and the Tigris. This 
city was intended to protect the region conquered by the Mos¬ 
lems about the mouth of the Euphrates; to cut off the trade 
of India from Persia, and to keep a check upon Ahwaz (a pari 
of Susiana or Khusestan), the prince or satrap of which, Hor 
musan by name, had taken an active part in the late battle of 
Kadesia. The city of Bassora was founded in the fourteenth 
Year of the Hegira, by Orweh Ibn Otbeh. It soon gathered 
within its walls great numbers of inhabitants from the sur¬ 
rounding country; rose rapidly in importance, and has ever 
since been distinguished as a mart for the Indian commerce. 

Having brought all the country in the neighborhood of Ka- ' 
desia into complete subjection, Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas, by 
command of the Caliph, proceeded in the conquest of Persia. 
The late victories, and the capture of the national banner, had 
struck despair into the hearts of the Persians. They con¬ 
sidered the downfall of their religion and empire at hand, and 
for a time made scarcely any resistance to the invaders. Cities 
and strongholds surrendered almost without a blow. Babel is 
incidentally enumerated among the captured places; but the 
once all-powerful Babylon was now shrunk into such insignifi- 



354 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 


cance that its capture seemed no\, worthy of a boast. Saad 
crossed the Tigris and advanced upon Madayn, the Persian 
capital. His army, on departing from Kadesia, had not 
exceeded twenty thousand men, having lost many by battle 
and more by disease. Multitudes, however, from the subju¬ 
gated cities, and from othe* parts, joined his standard while 
on the march, so that, as he approached Madayn, his forces 
amounted to sixty thousand men. 

There was abundance of troops in Madayn, the wrecks of 
vanquished armies and routed garrisons, but there was no one 
capable or willing to take the general command. All seemed 
paralyzed by their fears. The king summoned his counsellors 
about him, but their only advice was to fly. “ Kliorassan and 
Kerman are still yours,” said they; “let us depart while wo 
may do so in safety; why should we remain here to be made 
captives?” 

Yezdegird hesitated to take this craven advice; but moro 
from weakness and indecision of character than from any 
manly repugnance. He wavered and lingered, until what 
might have been an orderly retreat became a shameful flight. 
When the invaders were within one day’s march of his caph 
tal he ordered his valuables to be packed upon beasts of burden, 
and set off, with a worthless retinue of palace minions, attend¬ 
ants, and slaves, male and female, for Holwan, at the foot of 
the Medean hills. His example was followed throughout the 
city. There was hurry and tumult in every part. Fortunate 
was he who had a camel, or a horse, or an ass, to load with his 
most valuable effects; such as were not so provided, took what 
they could on their shoulders; but, in such a hasty aiid panic- 
stricken flight, where personal safety was the chief concern, 
little could be preserved; the greater part of their riches re¬ 
mained behind. Thus, the wealthy Madayn, the once famous 
Ctesiphon, which had formerly repulsed a Roman army, 
though furnished with battering rams and other warlike 
engines, was abandoned without a blow at the approach of 
these nomad warriors. 

As Saad entered the deserted city he gazed with wonder and 
admiration at its stately edifices, surrounded by vineyards and 
gardens, all left to his mercy by the flying owners. In pious 
exultation he repeated aloud a passage of the Koran, alluding 
to the abandonment by Pharoah and his troops of their habita¬ 
tions, when they went in pursuit of the children of Israel. 
“How many gardens and fountains, and fields of corn and 


MAHOMET AMD HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


355 

fak dwellings, and other souses of delight, did they leave 
behind them! Thus we dispossessed them thereof, and gave 
the same for an inheritance to another people. Neither heaven 
nor earth wept for them. They were unpitied.” * 

The deserted city was sacked and pillaged. One may imag- 
ine the sacking of such a place by the ignorant hordes of the 
desert. The rude Arabs beheld themselves surrounded by 
treasures beyond their conception; works of art, the value of 
which they could not appreciate, and articles of luxury which 
moved their ridicule rather than their admiration. In roving 
through the streets they came to the famous palace of the Khos- 
rus, begun by Khobad Ibn Firuz, and finished by his son Nush- 
irwan, constructed of polished marble, and called the white 
palace, from its resplendent appearance. As they gazed at it 
in wonderment, they called to mind the prediction of Ma¬ 
homet, when he heard that the haughty monarch of Persia 
had torn his letter: “Even so shall Allah rend his empire in 
pieces.” “ Behold the white palace of Khosru,” cried the Mos¬ 
lems to one another! ‘ ‘ This is the fulfilment of the prophecy 

oLthe apostle of God!” 

Saad entered the lofty portal of the palace with feelings of 
devotion. His first act was to make his salaam and prostra¬ 
tions, and pronounce the confession of faith in its deserted 
halls. He then took note of its contents, and protected it from 
the ravage of the soldiery, by making it his headquarters. It 
was furnished throughout with oriental luxury. It had ward¬ 
robes filled with gorgeous apparel. In the armory were weap¬ 
ons of all kinds, magnificently wrought; a coat of mail and 
sword, for state occasions, bedecked with jewels of incalculable 
value; a silver horseman on a golden horse, and a golden rider 
on a silver camel, all likewise studded with jewels. , 

In the vaults were treasures of gold and silver and precious 
stones; with money, the vast amount of which, though stated 
by Arabian historians, we hesitate to mention. 

In some of the apartments were gold and silver vessels filled 
with oriental perfumes. In the magazines were stored ex¬ 
quisite spices, odoriferous gums, and medicinal drugs. Among 
the latter were quantities of camphor, which the Arabs mis¬ 
took for salt and mixed with their food. 

In one of the chambers was a silken carpet of great size, 
which the king used in winter. Art and expense had been 


* Koran, chapter 24. 



356 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


lavished upon it. It was made to represent a garden. The 
leaves of the plants were emeralds; the flowers were embroid¬ 
ered in their natural colors, with pearls and jewels and pre¬ 
cious stones; the fountains were wrought with diamonds and 
sapphires, to represent the sparkling of their waters. The 
value of the whole was beyond calculation. 

The hall of audience surpassed every other part in magnifi¬ 
cence. The vaulted roof, says D’Herbolot, resembled a firma¬ 
ment decked with golden spheres, each with a corresponding 
movement, so as to represent the planets and, the signs of the 
zodiac. The throne was of prodigious grandeur, supported on 
silver columns. Above it was the crown of Khosru Nashir- 
wan, suspended by a golden chain to bear the immense weight 
of its j 3wels, but contrived to appear as if on the head of the 
morarch when seated. 

L. mule is said to have been overtaken, on which a trusty 
officer of the palace was bearing away some of the jewels of 
the crown, the tiara or diadem of Yezdegird, with his belt and 
scimetar and bracelets. 

Saad appointed Omar Ibn Muskry to take charge of all the 
spoils for regular distribution, and criers were sent about to 
make proclamation that the soldiers should render in their 
booty to that officer. Such was the enormous amount that, 
after a fifth had been set apart for the Caliph, the remainder, 
divided among sixty thousand men, gave each of them twelve 
hundred dirhems of silver. 

It took nine hundred heavily laden camels to convey to 
Medina the Caliph’s fifth of the spoil, among which the 
carpet, the clothing, and regalia of the king were included. 
The people of Medina, though of late years accustomed to the 
rich booty of the armies, were cAonished at such an amount 
of treasure. Omar ordered that a mosque should be built of 
pa~*t of the proceeds. A consultation was held over the royal 
carpet, whether it should be stored away in the public treasury 
to be used by the Caliph on state occasions, or whether it 
should be included in the booty to be shared. 

Omar hesitated to decide with his usual promptness, and 
referred the matter to Ali. “Oh, prince'of true believers!” 
exclaimed the latter; “how can one of thy clear perception 
doubt in this matter? In the world, nothing is thine but what 
thou expendest in well-doing. What thou wearest will be worn 
out; what thou eatest will be consumed; but that which thou 
expendest in well-doing is sent before thee to the other world.” 


MAHOMET AMD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


857 


Omar determined that the carpet should be shared among 
his chiefs. He divided it literally, with rigid equity, cutting 
it up without regard to the skill and beauty of the design, or 
its value as an entire piece of workmanship. Such was the 
richness of the materials, that the portion allotted to Ali alone 
sold for eight thousand dirhems of silver. 

This signal capture of the capita] of Persia took place in the 
month Safar, in the sixteenth year of the Hegira, and the year 
G37 of the Christian era; the same year with the capture of 
Jerusalem. The fame of such immense spoil, such treasures 
of art, in the hands of ignorant Arab soldiery, summoned the 
crafty and the avaricious from all quarters. All the world, it 
is said, flocked from the West, from Yemen, and from Egypt, 
to purchase the costly stuffs, captured from the Persians. 
It was like the vultures, winging their way from all parts of 
the heavens, to gorge on the relics of a hunting camp. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

CAPTURE OF JALULA —FLIGHT OF YEZDEGIRD TO REI—FOUNDING 
OF CUFA—SAAD RECEIVES A SEVERE REBUKE FROM THE CA¬ 
LIPH FOR HIS MAGNIFICENCE. 

Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas would fain have pursued Yezdegird 
to Holwan, among the hills of ancient Medea, where he had 
taken refuge; but he was restrained by the Caliph Omar, who 
kept a cautious check from Medina upon his conquering gen¬ 
erals ; fearful that in the flush and excitement of victory they 
might hurry forward beyond the reach of succor. By the 
command of Omar, therefore, he remained with his main 
army in Madayn, and sent his brother Hashem with twelve 
thousand men in pursuit of the fugitive monarch. Hashem 
found a large force of Persians, relics of defeated armies, as¬ 
sembled in Jalula, not far from Holwan, where they were dis¬ 
posed to make a stand. He laid siege to the place, but it was 
of great strength and maintained a brave and obstinate 
defence for six months, during which there were eighty as¬ 
saults. At length, the garrison being reduced by famine and 
incessant fighting, and the commander slain, it surrendered. 
Yezdegird on hearing of the capture of Jalula abandoned the 



358 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


city of Hoi wan, leaving troops there under a general named 
Habesh, to check the pursuit ot the enemy. The place of 
refuge which he now sought was the city of Rei, or Rai, the 
Rhages of Arrian; the Rhaga and Rhageia of the Greek geog¬ 
raphers ; a city of remote antiquity, contemporary, it is said, 
with Nineveh and Ecbatana, and mentioned in the book of 
Tobit; who, we are told, travelled from Nineveh to Rages, a 
city of Medea. It was a favorite residence of the Parthian 
kings in days of yore. .In his flight though the mountains the 
monarch was borne on a chair or litter between mules; travel¬ 
ling a station each day and sleeping in the litter. Habesh, 
whom he had left behind, was soon defeated, and followed him 
in his flight. 

Saad again wrote to the Caliph, urging that he might be 
permitted to follow the Persian king to his place of refuge 
among the mountains, before he should have time to assemble 
another army; but he again met with a cautious check. 
“You have this year,” said the Caliph, “taken Sawad and 
Irak; for Hoi wan is at the extremity of Irak. That is enough 
for the present. The welfare of true believers is of more value 
than booty.” So ended the sixteenth year of the Hegira. 

The climate of Madayn proving unhealthy to his troops, and 
Saad wishing to establish a fortified camp in the midst of his 
victories, was ordered by the Caliph to seek some favorable 
site on the western side of the Euphrates, where there was 
good air, a well-watered plain and'plenty of grass for the 
camels; things highly appreciated by the Arabs. 

Saad chose for the purpose the village of Cufa, which, accord¬ 
ing to Moslem tradition, was the spot where Noah embarked 
in the ark. The Arabs further pretend that the serpent after 
tempting Eve was banished to this place. Hence, they say, 
the guile and treachery for which the men of Cufa are prover¬ 
bial. This city became so celebrated that the Euphrates was at 
one time generally denominated Gahar Cufa, or the viver of 
Cufa. The most ancient characters of the Arabic alphabet 
are termed Cufic to the present day. 

In building Cufa, much of the stone, marble, and timber for 
the principal edifices were furnished from the ruins of Madayn; 
there being such a scarcity of those materials in Babylonia and 
its vicinity that the houses were generally constructed of 
bricks baked in the sun and cemented with bitumen. It used 
to be said, therefore, that the army on its remove took with it 
all the houses of Sawad. Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas, who appears 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 


859 


to have imbibed a taste for Persian splendor, erected a sump* 
tuous Kiosk or summer residence, and decorated it with a 
grand portal taken from the palace of the Khosrus at Madayn. 
When Omar heard of this he was sorely displeased, his great 
apprehension being that his generals would lose the good old 
Arab simplicity of manners in the luxurious countries they 
■were conquering. He forthwith dispatched a trusty envoy, 
Mahomet Ibn Muslemah, empowered to give Saad a salutary 
rebuke. On arriving at Cufa, Mahomet caused a great quan¬ 
tity of wood to be heaped against the’door of the Kiosk and set 
fire to it. When Saad came forth in amazement at this out¬ 
rage, Mahomet put into his hands the following letter from the 
Caliph: 

“I am told thou hast built a lofty palace, like to that of the 
Khosrus, and decorated it with a door taken from the latter, 
with a view to have guards and chamberlains stationed about 
it to keep off those who may come in quest of justice or assist¬ 
ance, as was the practice of the Khosrus before thee. In so 
doing thou hast departed from the ways of the prophet (on 
whom be benedictions), and hast fallen into the ways of the 
Persian monarchs. Know that the Khosrus have passed 
from their palace to the tomb; while the prophet, from his 
lowly habitation on earth, has been elevated to the highest 
heaven. I have sent Mahomet Ibn Muselmah to burn thy pal¬ 
ace. In this world two houses are sufficient for thee—one to 
dwell in, the other to contain the treasure of the Moslem. ” 

Saad was too wary to make any opposition to the orders of 
the stern-minded Omar; so he looked on without a murmur as 
his stately Kiosk was consumed by the flames. He even 
offered Mahomet presents, which the latter declined, and re¬ 
turned to Medina. Saad removed to a different part of the 
city, and built a more modest mansion for himself, and an¬ 
other for the treasury. 

In the same year with the founding of Cufa the Caliph Omar 
married Omm Kolsam, the daughter of Ali and Fatima, and 
granddaughter of the prophet. This drew him in still closer 
bonds of friendship and confidence with Ali, who with Othman 
shared his councils, and aided him in managing from Medina 
the rapidly accumulating affairs of the Moslem empire. 

It must be always noted, that however stern and strict may 
appear the laws and ordinances of Omar, he was rigidly im¬ 
partial in enforcing them; and one of liis own sons, having 
been found intoxicated, received the twenty bastinadoes on 


360 


MAHOMET AM) 11IS SUCCESSORS. 


the soles of the feet, which he had decreed for offences of the 
kind. — 


CHAPTER XXX. 

WAR WITH HORMUZAN, THE SATRAP OF AHWAZ—HIS CONQUEST 
AND CONVERSION. 

The founding of the city of Bassora had given great annoy¬ 
ance and uneasiness to Hormuzan, the satrap or viceroy of 
Ahwaz, or Susiana. His province lay between Babylonia and 
Farsistan, and he saw that this rising city of the Arabs was in¬ 
tended as a check upon him. His province was one of the 
richest and most important of Persia, producing cotton, rice, 
sugar, and wheat. It was studded with cities, which the his¬ 
torian Tabari compared to a cluster of stars. In the centre 
stood the metropolis Susa, one of the royal resorts of the Per¬ 
sian kings, celebrated in scriptural history, and said to possess 
the tomb of the prophet Daniel. It was once adorned with 
palaces and courts, and parks of prodigious extent, though now 
all is a waste, “ echoing only to the roar of the lion, or yell of 
the hyena.” 

Here Hormuzan, the satrap, emulated the state and luxury 
of a king. He was of a haughty spirit, priding himself upon 
Iris descent, his ancestors having once sat on the throne of 
Persia. For this reason his sons, being of the blood royal, 
were permitted to wear crowns, though of smaller size than 
those worn by kings, and his family was regarded with great 
deference by the Persians. 

This haughty satrap, not rendered wary by the prowess of 
the Moslem arms, which he had witnessed and experienced at 
Kadesia, made preparations to crush the rising colony of Bas¬ 
sora. The founders of that city called on the Caliph for pro¬ 
tection, and troops were marched to their assistance from Me¬ 
dina, and from the headquarters of Saad at Cufa. Hormuzan 
soon had reason to repent his having provoked hostilities. He 
was defeated in repeated battles, and at length was glad to 
make peace with the loss of half of his territories, and all but 
four of his cluster of cities. He was not permitted long to en¬ 
joy even this remnant of domain. Yezdegird, from his re¬ 
treat at Rei, reproached Hormuzan and the satrap of the adja- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


361 


cent province of Farsistan, ior not co-operating to withstand 
the Moslems. At his command they united their forces, and 
Hormuzan broke the treaty of peace which he had so recently 
concluded. 

The devotion of Hormuzan to his fugitive sovereign ended in 
his ruin. The Caliph ordered troops to assemble from the 
different Moslem posts, and complete the conquest of Ahwaz. 
Hormuzan disputed his territory bravely, but was driven from 
place to place, until he made his last stand in the fortress of 
Ahwaz, or Susa. For six months he was beleaguered, during 
which time there were many sallies and assaults, and hard 
lighting on both sides. At length, Bara Ibn Malek was sent 
to take command of the besiegers. He had been an especial 
favorite of the prophet, and there was a superstitious feeling 
concerning him. He manifested at all times an indifference to 
life or death; always pressed forward to the place of danger, 
and every action in which he served was successful. 

On his taking the command, his troops gathered round him P 
‘ ‘ Oh Bara! swear to overthrow these infidels, and the Most 
High will favor us.” 

Bara swore that the place would be taken, and the infidels 
put to flight, but that he would fall a martyr. 

In the very next assault he was killed by an arrow sped by 
Hormuzan. The army took his death as a good omen. 4 ‘ One 
half of his oath is fulfilled,” said they, “and so will be the 
other.” 

Shortly afterward a Persian traitor came to Abu Shebrah, 
who had succeeded to the Moslem command, and revealed a 
secret entrance by a conduit under the castle, by which it was 
supplied with water. A hundred Moslems entered it by night, 
threw open the outward gates, and let in the army into the 
court-yards. Hormuzan was ensconced, however, in a strong 
tower, or keep, from the battlements of which he held a parley 
with the Moslem commander. “I have a thousand expert 
\ archers with me,” said he, “who never miss their aim. By 
every arrow they discharge you will lose a man. Avoid this 
useless sacrifice. Let me depart in honor; give me safe 
conduct to the Caliph, and let him dispose of me as he 
pleases. ” 

It was agreed. Hormuzan was treated with respect as he 
issued from his fortress, and was sent under an escort to 
Medina. He maintained the air of one not conduoled as a 
prisoner, but attended by a guard of honor. As he approached 


362 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


the city he halted, arrayed himself in sumptuous apparel, with 
his jewelled belt and regal crown, and in this guise entered the 
gates. The inhabitants gazed in astonishment at such un¬ 
wonted luxury of attire. 

Omar was not at his dwelling; he had gone to the mosque. 
Hormuzan was conducted thither. On approaching the sacred 
edifice, the Caliph’s cloak was seen hanging against the wall, 
while he himself, arrayed in patched garments, lay asleep with 
his staff under his head. The officers of the escort seated 
themselves at a respectful distance until he should awake. 
“This,” whispered they to Hormuzan, “is the prince of true 
believers. ” 

“ This the Arab king!” said the astonished satrap; “and is 
this his usual attire?” “It is.” “And does he sleep thus 
without guards?” “He does; he comes and goes alone; and 
lies down and sleeps where he pleases.” “And can he adminis¬ 
ter justice, and conduct affairs without officers and messengers 
and attendants?” “Even so,” was the reply. “This,” ex¬ 
claimed Hormuzan, at length, ‘ ‘ is the condition of a prophet, 
but not of a king.” “ He is not a prophet,” was the reply, 
“but he acts like one.” 

As the Caliph awoke he recognized the officers of the escort. 
“What tidings do you bring?” demanded he.—“But who is 
this so extravagantly arrayed?” rubbing his eyes as they fell 
upon the embroidered robes and jewelled crown of the satrap. 
“This is Hormuzan, the king of Ahwaz.” “Take the infidel 
out of this place,” cried he, turning away his head. “Strip 
him of his riches, and put on him the riches of Islam.” 

Hormuzan was accordingly taken forth, and in a little time 
was brought again before the Caliph, clad in a simple garb of 
the striped cloth of Yemen. 

The Moslem writers relate various quibbles by which Hormu¬ 
zan sought to avert the death with which he was threatened, 
for having slain Bara Ibn Malek. He craved water to allay his 
thirst. A vessel of water was brought. Affecting to appre¬ 
hend immediate execution: “Shall I be spared until I have 
drunk this?” Being answered by the Caliph in the affirmative, 
he dashed the vessel to the ground. “Now,” said he,* “you 
cannot put me to death, for I can never drink the water.” 

The straightforward Omar, however, was not to be caught 
by a quibble. “Your cunning wifi, do yoruno good,” said he. 
“Nothing will save you but to embrace Islamism.” The 
haughty Hormuzan was subdued. He made the profession of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 363 

faith in due style, and was at once enrolled among true be¬ 
lievers. 

He resided thenceforth in Medina, received rich presents 
from the Caliph, and subsequently gave him much serviceable 
information and advice in his prosecution of the war with 
Persia. The conquest of Ahwaz was completed in the nine¬ 
teenth year of the Hegira. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

SAAD SUSPENDED FROM THE COMMAND—A PERSIAN ARMY AS¬ 
SEMBLED AT NEHAVEND—COUNCIL AT THE MOSQUE OF MEDINA 

—BATTLE OF NEHAVEND. 

Omar, as we have seen, kept a jealous and vigilant eye upon 
liis distant generals, being constantly haunted by the fear that 
they would become corrupted in the rich and luxurious 
countries they were invading, and lose that Arab simplicity 
w T hich he considered inestimable in itself, and all-essential to 
the success of the cause of Islam. Notwithstanding the severe 
reproof he had given to Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas in burning 
down his palace at Cufa, complaints still reached him that the 
general affected the pomp of a Caliph, that he was unjust and 
oppressive, unfair in the division of spoils, and slow in conduct¬ 
ing military concerns. These charges proved, for the most 
part, unfounded, but they caused Saad to be suspended from 
his command until they could be investigated. 

When the news reached Yezdegird at Rei that the Moslem 
general who had conquered at Kadesia, slain Rustam, captured 
Madayn, and driven himself to the mountains, was deposed 
from the command, he conceived fresh hopes, and wrote letters 
-to all the provinces yet unconquered, calling on the inhabitants 
to take up arms and make a grand effort for the salvation of 
the empire. Nebavend was appointed as the place where the 
troops were to assemble. It was a place of great antiquity, 
founded, says tradition, by Noah, and called after him, and was 
about fifteen leagues from Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana. 
Here troops gathered together to the number of one hundred 
and fifty thousand. 

Omar assembled his counsellors at the mosque of Medina, 



864 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


and gave them intelligence, just received, of this great arma¬ 
ment. “This,” said he, “is probably the last great effort of 
the Persians. If we defeat them now they will never be able 
to unite again.” He expressed a disposition, therefore, to take 
the command in person. Strong objections were advanced. 
f “Assemble troops from various parts,” said Othman; “but 
remain, yourself, either at Medina, Cufa, or Holwan, to send 
reinforcements if required, or to form a rallying point for the 
Moslems, if defeated.” Others gave different counsel. At 
length the matter was referred to Abbas Ibn Abd al Motalleb, 
who was considered one of the sagest heads for counsel in the 
tribe of Koreish. He gave it as his opinion that the Caliph 
should remain in Medina, and give the command of the cam¬ 
paign to Nu’man Ibn Mukry, who was already in Ahwaz, 
where he had been ever since Saad had sent him thither from 
Irak. It is singular to see the fate of the once mighty and 
magnificent empires of the Orient — Syria, Chaldea, Babylonia, 
and the dominions of the Medes and Persians—thus debated 
and decided in the mosque of Medina—by a handful of gray¬ 
headed Arabs, who but a few years previously had been home¬ 
less fugitives. 

Orders were now sent to Nu’man to march to Nehavend, 
and reinforcements joined him from Medina, Bassora, and 
Cufa. His force, when thus collected, was but moderate, but 
it was made up of men hardened and sharpened by incessant 
warfare, rendered daring and confident by repeated victory, 
and led by able officers. He was afterward joined by ten 
thousand men from Sawad, Holwan, and other places, many 
of whom were tributaries. 

The Persian army now collected at Nehavend was com¬ 
manded by Firuzan; he was old and infirm,- but full of intelli¬ 
gence and spirit, and the only remaining general considered 
capable of taking charge of such a force, the best generals hav¬ 
ing fallen in battle. The veteran, knowing the impetuosity of 
the Arab attack, and their superiority in the open field, had 
taken a strong position, fortified his camp, and surrounded it 
with a deep moat filled with water. Here he determined to 
tire out the patience of the Moslems, and await an opportunity 
to strike a decisive blow. 

Nu’man displayed his forces before the Persian camp, and 
repeatedly offered battle, but the cautious veteran was not to 
be drawn out of his intrenchments. Two months elapsed 
without any action, and the Moslem troops, as Firuzan had 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 355 

foreseen, began to grow discontented. and to murmur at their 
general. 

A stratagem was now resorted to by Nu’man to draw out the 
enemy. Breaking up his camp, he made a hasty retreat, leav¬ 
ing behind him many articles of little value. The stratagem 
succeeded. The Persians sallied, though cautiously, in pur¬ 
suit. Nu’man continued his feigned retreat for another day, 
still followed by the enemy. Having drawn them to a suffi¬ 
cient distance from their fortified camp, he took up a position 
at nightfall. “To-morrow,” said he to his troops, “ before the 
day reddens, be ready for battle. I have been with the pro¬ 
phet in many conflicts, and he always commenced battle after 
the Friday prayer.” 

The following day, when the troops were drawn out in order 
of battle, he made this prayer in their presence: “Oh Allah! 
sustain this day the cause of Islamism; give us victory over 
the infidels, and grant me the glory of martyrdom.” Then 
turning to his officers, he expressed a presentiment that he 
should fall in the battle, and named the person who, in such 
case, should take the command. 

He now appointed the signal for battle. “Three times,” 
said he, “I will cry the tekbir, and each time will shake my 
standard. At the third time let every one fall on as I shall 
do.” He gave the signal, Allah Achbar! Allah Achbar! Allah 
Achbar! At the third shaking of the standard the tekbir was 
responded by the army, and the air was rent by the universal 
shout of Allah Achbar! 

The shock of the two armies was terrific; they were soon 
enveloped in a cloud of dust, in which the sound of scimetars 
and battle-axes told the deadly work that was going on, while 
the shouts of Allah Achbar continued, mingled 'with furious 
cries and execrations of the Persians, and dismal groans of the 
wounded. In an hour the Persians were completely routed. 
“ Oh Lord!” exclaimed Nu’man in pious ecstasy, “my prayer 
for victory has been heard; may that for martyrdom be like¬ 
wise favored J” 

He advanced his standard in pursuit of the enemy, but at 
the same moment a Parthian arrow from the flying foe gave 
him the death he coveted. His body, with the face covered, 
was conveyed to his brother, and his standard given to 
Hadifeh, whom he had named to succeed him in thp cpim 
mand. 

The Persians were pursued with great slaughter. Firuzan 


366 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


fled toward Hamadan, but was overtaken at midnight as he 
was ascending a steep hill, embarrassed among a crowd of 
mules and camels laden with the luxurious superfluities of a Per¬ 
sian camp. Here he and several thousand of his soldiers and 
camp-followers were cut to pieces. The booty was immense. 
Forty of the mules were found to be laden with honey; which 
made the Arabs say, with a sneer, that FiruzaiTs army was 
clogged with its own honey, until overtaken by the true be¬ 
lievers. The whole number of Persians slain in this battle, 
which sealed the fate of the empire, is said to have amounted 
to one hundred thousand. It took place in the twenty-first 
year of the Hegira, and the year 641 of the Christian era, and 
was commemorated among Moslems as “ The Victory of Vic¬ 
tories.” 

On a day subsequent to the battle a man mounted on an ass 
rode into the camp of Hadifeh. He was one who had served 
in the temples of the fire-worshippers, and was in great con¬ 
sternation, fearing to be sacrificed by the fanatic Moslems. 
“Spare my life,” said he to Hadifeh, “and the life of another 
person whom I shall designate, and I will deliver into your 
hands a treasure put under my charge by Yezdegird when he 
fled to Rei.” His terms being promised, he produced a sealed 
box. On breaking the seal, Hadifeh found it filled with rubies 
and precious stones of various colors, and jevels of great price. 
He was astonished at the sight of what appeared to him incal¬ 
culable riches. ‘ ‘ These jewels, ” said he, ‘ ‘ have not been gained 
in battle, nor by the sword; we have, therefore, no right to any 
share in them. ” With the concurrence of his officers, therefore, 
he sent the box to the Caliph to be retained by himself or 
divided among the true believers as he should think proper. 
The officer who conducted the fifth part of the spoils to Medina 
delivered the box, and related its history to Omar. The Ca¬ 
liph, little skilled in matters of luxury, and holding them in 
supreme contempt, gazed with an ignorant or scornful eye at 
the imperial jewels, and refused to receive them. “You know 
not what these things are,” said he. “Neither do I; but they 
justly belong to those who slew the infidels, and to no one 
else.” He ordered the officer, therefore, to depart forthwith 
and carry the box back to Hadifeh. The jewels were sold by 
the latter to the merchants who followed the camp, and when 
the proceeds were divided among the troops, each horseman 
received for his share four thousand pieces of gold. 

Far other was the conduct of the Caliph when he received 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 267 

the letter giving an account of the victory at Nehavend. His 
first inquiry was after his old companion in the faith, LNu’man. 
“ May God grant you and him mercy!” was the reply, “ He 
has become a martyr!” 

Omar, it is said, wept. He next inquired who also were mar¬ 
tyrs. Several were named with whom he was acquainted; 
but many who were unknown to him. “If I know them not,” 
said he, piously quoting a text of the Koran, “ God does!” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

CAPTURE OF HAMAD AN f OF REI—SUBJUGATION OF TABARISTAN; 

OF AZERBIJAN—CAMPAIGN AMONG THE CAUCASIAN MOUNTAINS. 

The Persian troops who had survived tne signal defeat of 
Firuzan assembled their broken forces near the city of Hama- 
dun, but wer 3 soon routed again by a detachment sent against 
them by Hf dlifeh, who had fixed his aeadquarters at Neha¬ 
vend. The / then took refuge in Hamadan, and ensconced 
themselves in its strong fortress or citadel. 

Hamadan was the second city in Persia for grandeur, and 
was built upon the site of Ecbatana, in old times the principal 
city of the Medes. There were more Jews among its inhabi¬ 
tants than were to be found in any other city of Persia, and it 
boasted of possessing the tombs of Esther and Mordecai. It 
was situated on a steep eminence, down the sides of which it 
descended into a fruitful plain, watered by streams gushing 
down from the lofty Orontes, now Mount El wand. The place 
was commanded by Habesh, the same general who had been 
driven from Holwan after the flight of Yezdegird. Habesh 
sought an interview with Hadifeh, at his encampment at 
Nehavend, and made a treaty of peace with him; but it was a 
fraudulent one, and intended merely to gain time. Returning 
to Hamadan, he turned the whole city into a fortress, and 
assembled a strong garrison, being reinforced from the neigh¬ 
boring province of Azerbijan. 

On being informed of this want of good faith on the part of 
the governor of Hamadan, the Caliph Omar dispatched a 
strong force against the place, led by an able officer named 
Nu’haim Ibn Mukrin. Habesh had more courage than cau¬ 
tion. Confident in the large force he had assembled, instead 



868 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


of remaining within his strongly fortified city, he sallied forth 
and met the Moslems in open field. The battle lasted for three 
days, and was harder fought than even that of Nehavend, but 
ended in leaving the Moslems triumphant masters of the once 
formidable capital of Medea. 

Nu’haim now marched against Rei, late the place of refuge 
of Yezdegird. That prince, however, had deserted it on the 
approach of danger, leaving it in charge of a noble named 
Siyawesh Ibn Barham. Hither the Persian princes had sent 
troops from the yet unconquered provinces, for Siyawesh had 
nobly offered to make himself as a buckler to them, and con¬ 
quer or faff in their defence. His patriotism was unavailing; 
treachery and corruption were too prevalent among the Per¬ 
sians. Zain, a powerful noble resident in Rei, and a deadly 
enemy of Siyawesh, conspired to admit two thousand Moslems 
in at one gate of the city, at the time when its gallant governor 
was making a sally by another. A scene, of tumult and car¬ 
nage took place in the streets, where both armies engaged in 
deadly conflict. The patriot Siyawesh was slain, with a great 
part of his troops; the city was captured and sacked, and its 
citadel destroyed, and the traitor Zain was rewarded for his 
treachery by being made governor of the ruined place. 

Nu’haim now sent troops in different directions against 
Kumish, and Dameghan, and Jurgan (the ancient Hircania), 
and Tabaristan. They met with feeble resistance. The na¬ 
tional spirit was broken; even the national religion was nearly 
at an end. “ This Persian religion of ours has become obso¬ 
lete,” said Farkham, a military sage, to an assemblage of com¬ 
manders, who asked his advice; “the new religion is carrying 
everything before it; my advice is to make peace and pay trib¬ 
ute.” His advice was adopted. All Tabaristan became tribu¬ 
tary in the annual sum of five hundred thousand dirhems, 
with the condition that the Moslems should levy no troops in 
that quarter. 

Azerbijan was next invaded; the country which had sent 
troops to the aid of Hamadan. This province lay north of Rei 
and Hamadan, and extended to the Rocky Caucasus. It was 
the- stronghold of the Magians or Fire-worshippers, where they 
had their temples, and maintained their perpetual fire. Hence 
the name of the country, Azer signifying fire. The princes of 
the country made an ineffectual stand; their army was de¬ 
feated; the altars of the fire-worshippers were overturned; 
their temples destroyed, and Azerbijan won. 


MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 


3G9 


The arms of Islam had now been carried triumphantly to the 
very defiles of the Caucasus; those mountains were yet to be 
subdued. Their rocky sierras on the east separated Azerbijan 
from Haziz and the shores of the Caspian, and on the north 
from the vast Sarmatian regions. The passes through these 
mountains were secured of yore by fortresses and walls and 
iron gates, to bar against irruptions from the shadowy land of 
Gog and Magog, the terror of the olden time, for by these 
passes had poured in the barbarous hordes of the north, “a 
mighty host all riding upon horses, ” who lived in tents, wor¬ 
shipped the naked sword planted in the earth, and decorated 
their steeds with the scalps of their enemies slain in battle.* 


* By some Gog and Magog are taken in an allegorical sense, signifying the 
princes of heathendom, enemies of saints and the church. 

According to the prophet Ezekiel, Gog was the king of Magog; Magog signifying 
the people, and Gog the king of the country. The}' are names that loom vaguely 
and fearfully in the dark denunciations of the prophets, and in the olden time in¬ 
spired awe throughout the Eastern world. 

The Arabs, says Lane, call Gog and Magog, Yajuj and Majuj, and say they are 
two nations or tribes descended from Japhet, the son of Noah; or, as others write, 
Gog is a tribe of the Turks, and Magog those of Gilan; the Geli and the Gelac of 
Ptolemy and Strabo. They made their irruptions into the neighboring countries in 
the spring, and carried off all the fruits of the earth.— Sale's Koran, note to eh. 18. 

According to Moslem belief, a great irruption of Gog and Magog is to be one of 
the signs of the latter days, forerunning the resurrection and final judgment. 
They are to come from the north in a mighty host, covering the land as a cloud; so 
that when subdued, their shields and bucklers, their bows and arrows and quivers, 
and the staves of their spears, shall furnish the faithful with fuel for seven years. 
—All which is evidently derived from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, with which 
Mahomet had been made acquainted by his Jewish instructors. 

The Koran makes mention of a wall built as a protection against these fearful 
people of the north by Dhu’lkarneim, or the Two Horned; by whom some suppose 
is meant Alexander the Great, others a Persian king of the first race, contemporary 
with Abraham. 

And they said, O Dhu’lkarneim, verily, Gog and Magog waste the land. . . . 
He answered, I will set a strong wall between you and them. Bring me iron in 
large pieces, until it fill up the space between the two sides of these mountains. 
And he said to the workmen, Blow with your bellows until it make the iron red hot; 
and bring me molten brass, that I may pour upon it. Wherefore, when this wall 
was finished, Gog and Magog could not scale it, neither could they dig through 
it.— Sale's Koran , chap. 18. 

The Czar Peter the Great, in his expedition against the Persians, saw in the 
neighborhood of the city of Derbend, which was then besieged, the ruins of a wall 
which went up hill and down dale, along the Caucasus, and was said to extend 
from the Euxine to the Caspian. It was fortified from place to place, by towers or 
castles. It was eighteen Russian stades in height; built of stones laid up dry; 
some of them three ells long and very wide. The color of the stones, and the tradi¬ 
tions of the country, showed it to be of great antiquity. The Arabs and Persians 
said that it was built against the invasions of Gog and Magog.—See Travels in the 
East, hy Sir William Quseley. 



370 


MAHOMET AND 1118 SUCCESSORS. 


Detachments of Moslems under different leaders penetrated 
the defiles of these mountains and made themselves masters of 
the Derbends, or mountain barriers. One of the most im¬ 
portant, and which cost the greatest struggle, was a city or 
fortress called by the Persians Der-bend; by the Turks Dernir- 
Capi or the Gate of Iron, and by the Arabs Bab-el-abwab (the 
Gate of Gates). It guards a defile between a promontory of 
Mount Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. A superstitious belief 
is still connected with it by the Moslems. Originally it had 
three gates, two only are left; one of these has nearly sunk 
into the earth; they say when it disappears the day of judg¬ 
ment will arrive. 

Abda’lrahman Ibn Eabiah, one of the Moslem commanders 
who penetrated the defiles of the Caucasus, was appointed by 
Omar to the command of the Derbends or passes, with orders 
to keep vigilant watch over them; for the Caliph was in con¬ 
tinual solicitude about the safety of the Moslems on these re¬ 
mote expeditions, and was fearful that the Moslem troops 
might be swept away by some irruption from the north. 

Abda’lrahman, with the approbation of the Caliph, made a 
compact with Shahr-Zad, one of the native chiefs, by which 
the latter, in consideration of being excused from paying 
tribute, undertook to guard the Derbends against the northern 
hordes. The Arab general had many conversations with 
Shahr-Zad about the mountains, which are favored regions of 
Persian romance and fable. His imagination was fired with 
what he was told about the people beyond the Derbends, the 
Allani and the Pus; and about the great wall or barrier of 
Yajuj and Majuj, built to restrain their inroads. 

In one of the stories told by Shahr-Zad, the reader will per¬ 
ceive the germ of one of the Arabian tales of Sinbad the Sailor. 
It is recorded to the following purport by Tabari, the Persian 
historian: “One day as AbdaTrahman was seated by Shahr- 
Zad, conversing with him, he perceived upon his 5 finger a ring 
decorated with a ruby, which burned like fire in the day¬ 
time, but at night was of dazzling brilliancy. ‘ It came, ’ said 
Shahr-Zad, ‘ from the wall of Yajuj and Majuj; from a king 
whose dominions between the mountains is traversed by the 
wall. I sent him many presents and asked but one ruby in 
return.’ Seeing the curiosity of Abda’lrahman aroused, He 
sent for the man who had brought the ring, and commanded 
him to relate the circumstances of his errand. 

u ‘ When I delivered the presents and the le tter of Shahr* 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


371 


Zad to that king,’ said the man, ‘he called his chief falconer, 
and ordered him to procure the jewel required. The falconer 
kept an eagle for three days without food, until he was nearly 
starved; he then took him up into the mountains near the 
wall, and I accompanied him. From the summit of one of 
these mountains, we looked down into a deep dark chasm like 
an abyss. The falconer now produced a piece of tainted 
meat; threw it into the ravine, and let loose the eagle. He 
swept down after it; pounced upon it as it reached the ground, 
and returning with it, perched upon the hand of the falconer. 
The ruby which now shines in that ring was found adhering 
to the meat.’ 

44 AbdaTrahman asked an account of the wall. 4 It is built,’ 
replied the man, 4 of stone, iron, and brass, and extends down 
one mountain and up another.’ ‘This,’ said the devout and 
all-believing Abda’lrahman, 4 must be the very wall of which 
the Almighty makes mention in the Koran. ’ 

4 4 He now inquired of Shahr-Zad what was the value of 
the ruby. 4 No one knows its value,’was the reply; ‘though 
presents to an immense amount had been made in return for 
it. ’ Shahr-Zad now drew the ring from his finger, and offered 
it to Abda’lrahman, but the latter refused to accept it, saying 
that a gem of that value was not suitable to him. 4 Had you 
been one of the Persian kings, ’ said Shahr-Zad, 4 you would 
have taken it from me by force; but men who conduct like 
you will conquer all the world.’” 

The stories which he had heard had such an effect upon 
Abda’lrahman, that he resolved to make a foray into the 
mysterious country beyond the Derbends. Still it could only 
be of a partial nature, as he was restrained from venturing far 
by the cautious injunctions of Omar. 44 Were I not fearful of 
displeasing the Caliph,” said he, 44 1 would push forward even 
to Yajuj and Majuj, and make converts of all the infidels.” 

On issuing from the mountains, he found himself among a 
barbarious people, the ancestors of the present Turks; who in¬ 
habited a region of country between the Euxine and the 
Caspian seas. A soldier who followed Abda’lrahman in this 
foray gave the following account of these people to the Caliph 
on his return to Medina. “They were astonished,” said he, 
“at our appearance, so different from their old enemies the 
Persians, and asked us, 4 Are you angels, or the sons of Adam?’ 
to which we replied, we are sons of Adam; but the angels of 
heaven are on our side and aid us in our warfare.” 


372 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


The infidels forbore to assail men thus protected; one, how¬ 
ever, more shrewd or dubious than the rest, stationed himself 
behind a tree, sped an arrow, and slew a Moslem. The de¬ 
lusion was at an end; the Turks saw that the strangers were 
mortal, and from that time there was hard fighting. Abda’lrah- 
man laid siege to a place called Belandscher, the city or 
stronghold of the Bulgarians or Huns, another semi-barbarous 
and warlike people like the Turks, who, like them, had not yet 
made themselves world-famous by their conquering migra¬ 
tions. The Turks came to the aid of their neighbors; a severe 
battle took place, the Moslems were defeated, and Abda’lrah- 
man paid for his daring enterprise and romantic curiosity 
with his life. The Turks, who still appear to have retained a 
superstitious opinion of their unknown invaders, preserved 
the body of the unfortunate general as a relic, and erected a 
shrine in honor of it, at which they used to put up their 
prayers for rain in time of drought. 

The troops of Abda’lrahman retreated within the Derbends; 
his brother Selman Ibn Rabiah was appointed to succeed him 
in the command of the Caucasian passes, and thus ended the 
unfortunate foray into the land of Gog and Magog. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE OZJPH OMAR ASSASSINATED BY A FIRE-WORSHIPPER—HIS 
CHARACTER—OTHMAN ELECTED CALIPH. 

The life and reign of the Caliph Omar, distinguished by such 
great and striking events, were at length brought to a sudden 
and sanguinary end. Among the Persians who had been 
brought as slaves to Medina, was one named Firuz, of the sect 
of the Magi, or fire-worshippers. Being taxed daily by his 
master two pieces of silver out of his earnings, he complained 
of it to Omar as an extortion. The Caliph inquired into his 
condition, and, finding that he was a carpenter, and expert in 
the construction of windmills, replied, that the man who ex¬ 
celled in such a handicraft could well afford to pay two dirhems 
a day. “Then,” muttered Firuz, “I’ll construct a windmill 
for you that shall keep grinding until the day of judgment. ” 
Omar was struck with his menacing air. ‘ ‘ The slave threatens 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


373 


me,” said he, calmly. “If I were disposed to punish any one 
on suspicion, I should take off his head;” he suffered him, 
however, to depart without further notice. 

Three days afterward, as he was praying in the mosque, 
Firuz entered suddenly and stabbed him thrice with a dagger. 
The attendants rushed upon the assassin. He made furious 
resistance, slew some and wounded others, until one of his 
assailants threw his vest over him and seized him, upon which 
he stabbed himself to'the heart and expired. Religion may 
have had some share in prompting this act of violence; perhaps 
revenge for the ruin brought upon his native country. “ God 
be thanked,” said Omar, “that he by whose hand it was de¬ 
creed I should fall was not a Moslem!” 

The Caliph gathered strength sufficient to finish the prayer 
in which he had been interrupted; “for he who deserts his 
prayers,” said he, “is not in Islam.” Being taken to his 
house, he languished three days without hope of recovery, but 
could not be prevailed upon to nominate a successor. ‘ £ I can¬ 
not presume to do that,” said he, “ which the prophet himself 
did not do.” Some suggested that he should nominate his 
son Abdallah. “Omar’s family,” said he, “has had enough 
in Omar, and needs no more. ” He appointed a council of six 
persons to determine as to the succession after his decease; all 
of whom he considered worthy of the Caliphat; though he 
gave it as his opinion that the choice would be either Aii or 
Othman. “Shouldst thou become Caliph,” said he to Ali, “ do 
not favor thy relatives above all others, nor place the house of 
Haschem on the neck of all mankind;” and he gave the same 
caution to Othman in respect to the family of Omeya. 

Calling for ink and paper, he wrote a letter as his last testa¬ 
ment, to whosoever might be his successor, full of excellent 
counsel for the upright management of affairs, and the promo¬ 
tion of the faith. He charged his son Abdallah in the most 
earnest manner, a,s one of the highest duties of Islamism, to 
repay eighteen thousand dirhems which he had borrowed out 
of the public treasury. All present protested against this as 
unreasonable, since the money had been expended in relief of 
the poor and destitute, but Omar insisted upon it as his last 
will. He then sent to Ayesha and procured permission of her 
to be buried next to her father Abu Beker. 

Ibn Abbas and Ali now spoke to him in words of comfort, 
setting forth the blessings of Islam, which had crowned hb 
administration, and that he would leave no one behind him 


374 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


who could charge him with injustice. “ Testify this for me,” 
said he, earnestly, “ at the day of judgment.” They gave him 
their hands in promise; but he exacted that they should give 
him a written testimonial, and that it should be buried with 
him in the grave. 

Having settled all his worldly affairs, and given directions 
about his sepulture, he expired, the seventh day after his 
assassination, in the sixty-third year of his age, after a trium 
phant reign of ten 7 /ears and six months. 

His death was rashly and bloodily revenged. Mahomet Ibn 
Abu Beker, the brother of Ayesha, and imbued with her mis¬ 
chief-making propensity, persuaded Abdallah, the son of Omar, 
that his father’s murder was the result of a conspiracy; Firuz 
having been instigated to the act by his daughter Lulu, a 
Christian named Dschofeine, and Hormuzan, the once haughty 
and magnificent satrap of Susiana. In the transport of his 
rage, and instigated by the old Arab principle of blood revenge, 
Abdallah slew all three of the accused, without reflecting on 
the improbability of Hormuzan, at least, being accessory to the 
murder; being, since his conversion, in close friendship with 
the late Caliph, and his adviser, on many occasions, in the 
prosecution cf the Persian war. 

The whole history of Omar shows him to have been a man 
of great powers of mind, inflexible integrity, and rigid justice. 
He was, more than any one else, the founder of the Islam em¬ 
pire, confirming and carrying out the inspirations of the prophet; 
aiding Abu Beker with his counsels during his brief Caliphat; 
and establishing wise regulations for the strict administration 
of the laws throughout the rapidly-extending bounds of the 
Moslem conquests. The rigid hand which he kept upon his 
most popular generals in the midst of their armies, and in the 
most distant scenes of their triumphs, give signal evidence of his 
extraordinary capacity to rule. In the simplicity of his habits, 
and his contempt for all pomp and luxury,, he emulated the 
example of the prophet and Abu Beker. He endeavored in¬ 
cessantly to impress the merit and policy of the same in his 
letters to his generals. “Beware,” he would say, “of Persian 
luxury, both in food and raiment. Keep to the simple habits 
of your country, and Allah will continue you victorious; de¬ 
part from them, and he will reverse your fortunes.” It was 
his strong conviction of the truth of this policy, which made 
him so severe in punishing all ostentatious style and luxurious 
indulgence in his officers. 


MAHOMET ANB Ills SUCCESSORS. ~ 


375 

Some of his ordinances do credit to his heart as well as his 
head. He forbade that any female captive who had borne a 
child should be sold as a slave. In his weekly distributions of 
the surplus money of his treasury he proportioned them to the 
wants, not the merits of the applicant. “ God,” said he, “ has 
bestowed the good things of this world to relieve our neces¬ 
sities, not to reward our virtues: those will be rewarded in 
another world.” 

One of the early measures of his reign was the assigning 
pensions to the most faithful companions of the prophet, and 
those who had signalized themselves in the early service of the 
faith. Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, had a yearly pension 
of 200,000 dirhems; others of his relatives in graduated pro¬ 
portions ; those veterans who had fought in the battle of Beder 
5000 dirhems; pensions of less amount to those who had dis¬ 
tinguished themselves in Syria, Persia, and Egypt. Each of 
the prophet’s wives was allowed ten thousand dirhems yearly, 
and Ayesha twelve thousand. Hasan and Hosein, the sons of 
Ah and grandsons of the prophet, had each a pension of five 
thousand dirhems. On any one who found fault with these 
disbursements out of the public wealth, Omar invoked the 
curse of Allah. 

He was the first to establish a chamber of accounts or ex¬ 
chequer ; the first to date events from the Hegira or flight of 
the prophet: and the first to introduce a coinage into the Mos¬ 
lem dominions; stamping the coins with the name of the reign¬ 
ing Caliph; and the words, “ There is no God but God.” 

During his reign, we are told, there were thirty-six thousand 
towns, castles, and strongholds taken; but he was not a waste¬ 
ful conqueror. He founded new cities, established important 
marts, built innumerable mosques, and linked the newly ac¬ 
quired provinces into one vast empire by his iron inflexi¬ 
bility of purpose. As has well been observed, “His Cali- 
phat, crowned with the glories of its triple conquest of Syria, 
Persia, and Egypt, deserves to be distinguished as the heroic 
age of Saracen history. The gigantic foundations of the Sara¬ 
cenic power were perfected in the short space of less than ten 
years.” Let it be remembered, moreover, that this great con¬ 
queror, this great legislator, this magnanimous sovereign, was 
originally a rude, half-instructed Arab of Mecca. Well may 
we say in regard to the early champions of Islam, “There 
were giants in those days. ” 

After the death of Omar the six persons met together whom 


376 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


he had named as a council to elect his successor. They were 
Ali, Othman, Telha, Ibn Obeid’allah (Mahomet’s son-in-law), 
Zobeir, Abda’lrahman, Ibn Awf, and Saad Ibn Abu Wakkas. 
They had all been personally intimate with Mahomet, and 
were therefore styled the companions. 

After much discussion and repeated meetings the Caliphat 
was offered to Ali, on condition that he would promise to gov¬ 
ern according to the Koran and the traditions of Mahomet, and 
the regulations established by the two seniors or elders, mean¬ 
ing the two preceding Caliphs, Abu Beker and Omar. 

Ali replied that he would govern according to the Koran and 
the authentic traditions; but would, in all other respects, act 
according to his own judgment, without reference to the ex¬ 
ample of the seniors. This reply not being satisfactory to the 
council, they made the same proposal to Othman Ibn Affan, 
who assented to all the conditions, and was immediately 
elected, and installed three days after the death of his prede¬ 
cessor. He was seventy years of age at the tune of his elec¬ 
tion. He was tall and swarthy, and his long gray beard was 
tinged with henna. He was strict in his religious duties; fast¬ 
ing, meditating, and studying the Koran; not so simple in his 
habits as his predecessors, but prone to expense and lavish 
of his riches. His bountiful spirit, however, was evinced at 
times in a way that gained him much popularity. In a time 
of famine he had supplied the poor of Medina with corn. He 
had purchased at great cost the ground about the mosque of 
Medina, to give room for houses for the prophet’s wives. He 
had contributed six hundred and fifty camels and fifty horses 
for the campaign against Tabuc. 

He derived much respect among zealous Moslems for having 
married two of the prophet’s daughters, and for having been 
in both of the Hegiras or flights, the first into Abyssinia, the 
second, the memorable flight to Medina. Mahomet used to say 
of him, “ Each thing has its mate, and each man his associate: 
my associate in paradise is Othman.” 

Scarcely was the new Caliph installed in office when the re¬ 
taliatory punishment prescribed by the law was invoked upon 
Obeid’allah, the son of Omar, for the deaths so rashly inflicted 
on those whom he had suspected of instigating his father’s as¬ 
sassination. Othman was perplexed between the letter of the 
law and the odium of following the murder of the father by 
the execution of the son. He was kindly relieved from his per¬ 
plexity by the suggestion, that as the act of Obeid’allah took 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


377 


place in the interregnum between the Caliphats of Omar and 
Othman, it did not come under the cognizance of either. Oth- 
man gladly availed himself of the quibble; Obeid’allah escaped 
unpunished, and the sacrifice of the once magnificent Hormu ■ 
zan and his fellow-victims remained unavenged. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

CONCLUSION OF THE PERSIAN CONQUEST—FLIGHT AND DEATH OF 
YEZDEGIRD. 

The proud empire of the Khosrus had received its death¬ 
blow during the vigorous Caliphat of Omar; what signs of life 
it yet • gave were but its dying struggles. The Moslems, led 
by able generals, pursued their conquests in different direc¬ 
tions. Some, turning to the west, urged their triumphant 
way through ancient Assyria; crossed the Tigris by the bridge 
of Mosul, passing the ruins of mighty Nineveh as unheedingly 
as they had passed those of Babylon; completed the subjuga¬ 
tion of Mesopotamia, and planted their standards beside those 
of their brethren who had achieved the conquest of Syria. 

Others directed their course into the southern and eastern 
provinces, following the retreating steps of Yezdegird. A fiat 
issued by the late Caliph Omar had sealed the doom of that 
unhappy monarch. “Pursue the fugitive king wherever he 
may go, until you have driven him from the face of the 
earth!” 

Yezdegird, after abandoning Rei, had led a wandering life, 
shifting from city to city and province to province, still flying 
at the approach of danger. At one time we hear of him in the 
splendid city of Ispahan; next among the mountains of Farsis- 
fcan, the original Persis, the cradle of the conquerors of Asia; 
and it is another of the lessons furnished by history, to see the 
last of the Khosrus a fugitive among those mountains -whence, 
in foregone times, Cyrus had led his hardy but frugal and 
rugged bands to win, by force of arms, that vast empire which 
was now falling to ruin through its effeminate degeneracy. 

For a time the unhappy monarch halted in Istakar, the 
pride of Persia, where the tottering remains of Persepolis, and 
its hall of a thousand columns, speak of the ancient glories of 
the Persian kings. Here Yezdegird had been fostered and 



378 


M inOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


concealed during his youthful days, and here he came n%u* 
being taken among the relics of Persian magnificence. 

From Farsistan he was driven to Kerman, the ancient Car- 
mania; thence into Khorassan, in the northern part of which 
vast province he took breath at the city of Merv, or Merou, on 
the remote boundary of Bactriana. In all his wanderings he 
was encumbered by the shattered pageant of an oriental court, 
a worthless throng which had fled with him from Madayn, 
and which he had no means of supporting. At Merv he had 
four thousand persons in his train, all minions of the palace, 
useless hangers-on, porters, grooms, and slaves, together with 
his wives and concubines, and their female attendants. 

In this remote halting-place he devoted himself to building 
a fire-temple; in the mean time he wrote letters to such of the 
cities and provinces as were yet unconquered, exhorting his 
governors and generals to defend, piece by piece, the frag¬ 
ments of empire which he had deserted. 

The city of Ispahan, one of the brightest jewels of his 
crown, was well garrisoned by wrecks of the army of Neha- 
vend, and might have made brave resistance; but its gover¬ 
nor, Kadeskan, staked the fortunes of the place upon a single 
combat with the Moslem commander who had invested it, and 
capitulated at the first shock of lances; probably through 
some traitorous arrangement. 

Ispahan has never recovered from that blow. Modern 
travellers speak of its deserted streets, its abandoned palaces, 
its silent bazaars. “ I have ridden for miles among its ruins,” 
says one, “without meeting any living creature, excepting 
perhaps a jackal .peeping over a wall, or a fox running into 
his hole. Now and then an inhabited house was to be seen, 
the owner of which might be assimilated to Job’s forlorn man 
dwelling in desolate cities, and in houses which no man in- 
habiteth; which are ready to become heaps.” 

‘ Istakar made a nobler defence. The national pride of the 
Persians was too much connected with this city, once their 
boast, to let it fall without a struggle. There was another 
gathering of troops from various parts; one hundred and 
twenty thousand are said to have united under the standard 
of Shah-reg the patriotic governor. It was all in vain. The 
Persians were again defeated in a bloody battle; Shah-reg was 
slain, and Istakar, the ancient Persepolis, once almost the 
mistress of the Eastern world, was compelled to pay tribute 
to the Arabian Caliph. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


311 


The course of Moslem conquest now turned into the vast 
province of Khorassan; subdued one part of it after another, 
and approached the remote region where Yezdegird had taken 
refuge. Driven to the boundaries of his dominions, the fugi¬ 
tive monarch crossed the Oxus (the ancient Gihon) and the 
sandy deserts beyond, and threw himself among the shepherd 
hordes of Scythia. His wanderings are said to have extended 
to the borders of Tshin, or China, from the emperor of which 
he sought assistance. 

Obscurity hangs over this part of his story; it is affirmed 
that he succeeded in obtaining aid from the great Khan of the 
Tartars, and re-crossing the Gihon was joined by the troops of 
Balkh or Bactria, which province was still unsubdued and 
loyal. With these he endeavored to make a stand against 
his unrelenting pursuers. A slight reverse, or some secret 
treachery, put an end to the adhesion of his barbarian ally. 
The Tartar chief returned with his troops to Turkestan. 

Yezdegird’s own nobles, tired of following his desperate 
fortunes, now conspired to betray him and his treasures into 
the hands of the Moslems as a price for their own safety. He 
was at that time at Merv, or Merov, on the Oxus, called Merou 
al Koud, or “ Merou of the River,” to distinguish it from Merou 
in Khorassan. Discovering the intended treachery of his 
nobles, and of the governor of the place, he caused his slaves 
to let him down with cords from a window of his palace and 
fled, alone and on foot, under cover of the night. At the 
break of day he found himself near a mill, on the banks of the 
river, only eight miles from the city, and offered the miller 
his ring and bracelets, enriched with gems, if he would ferry 
him across the stream. The boor, who knew nothing of 
jewels, demanded four silver oboli, or drachms, the amount of 
a day’s earnings, as a compensation for leaving his work. 
While they were debating, a party of horsemen who were in 
pursuit of the king came up and clove him with their scime- 
tars. Another account states that, exhausted and fatigued 
with the weight of his embroidered garments, he sought rest 
and concealment in the mill, and that the miller spread a mat, 
on which he laid down and slept. His rich attire, however, 
his belt of gold studded with jewels, his rings and bracelets, 
excited the avarice of the miller, who slew him with an axe 
while he slept, and, having stripped the body, threw it into 
the water. In the morning several horsemen in search of 
him arrived at the mill, where discovering, by his clothes and 


380 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


jewels, that he had been murdered, they put the miller to 
death. 

This miserable catastrophe to a miserable career is said to 
have occurred on the 23d August, in the year 651 of the Chris¬ 
tian era. Yezdegird was in the thirty-fourth year of his age, 
having reigned nine years previous to the battle of Nehavend, 
and since that event having been ten years a fugitive. His¬ 
tory lays no crime to his charge, yet his hard fortunes and un- 
untimely end have faded to awaken the usual interest and 
sympathy. He had been schooled in adversity from his early 
youth, yet he failed to profit by it. Carrying about with him 
the wretched relics of an effeminate court, he sought only his 
personal safety, and wanted the courage and magnanimity to 
throw himself at the head of his armies, and battle for his 
crown and country like a great sovereign and a patriot prince. 

Empires, however, like all other things, have their allotted 
time, and die, if not by violence, at length of imbecility and 
old age. That of Persia had long since lost its stamina, and 
the energy of a Cyrus would have been unable to infuse new 
life into its gigantic but palsied limbs. At the death of Yezde¬ 
gird it fell under the undisputed sway of the Caliphs, and be¬ 
came little better than a subject province.* 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

AMRU DISPLACED FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF EGYPT—REVOLT 
OF THE INHABITANTS—ALEXANDRIA RETAKEN BY TIIE IMPERI¬ 
ALISTS—AMRU REINSTATED IN COMMAND—RETAKES ALEXAN¬ 
DRIA, AND TRANQUILLIZES EGYPT—IS AGAIN DISPLACED —AB' 
DALLAH IBN SAAD INVADES THE NORTH OF AFRICA. 

“In the conquests of Syria, Persia, and Egypt,” says a mod¬ 
ern writer, “the fresh and vigorous enthusiasm of the personal 
companions and proselytes of Mahomet was exercised and ex- 


* According to popular traditions in Persia. Yezdegird, in the course of his 
wanderings, took refuge for a time in the castle of Faliender, near Schiraz, and 
buried the crown jewels and treasures of Nushirwan, in a dee].) pit or well under 
the castle, where they still remain guarded by a talisman, so that they cannot be 
found or drawn forth. Others say that he had them removed and deposited in 
trust with the Khacan, or emperor of Chin or Tartary. After the extinction of 
the royal Persian dynasty, those treasures and the crown remained in Chin.— Sit 
William Ouseley's Travels in the East, vol. ii. p. 31 . 







MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


381 


pended, and the generation of warriors whose simple fanati- 
cism had been inflamed by the preaching of the pseudo prophet, 
was in a great measure consumed in the sanguinary and per¬ 
petual toils of ten arduous campaigns.” 

We shall now see the effect of those conquests on the na¬ 
tional character and habits; the avidity of place and power 
and wealth superseding religious enthusiasm; and the enervat¬ 
ing luxury and soft voluptuousness of Syria and Persia sap-* 
ping the rude but masculine simplicity of the Arabian desert. 
Above all, the single-mindedness of Mahomet and his two 
immediate successors is at an end. Other objects beside the 
mere advancement of Islamism distract the attention of its 
leading professors; and the struggle for worldly wealth and 
worldly sway, for the advancement of private ends, and tho. 
aggrandizement of particular tribes and families, destroy tho> 
unity of the empire, and beset the Caliphat with intrigue, trea> 
son, and bloodshed. 

It was a great matter of reproach against the Caliph Oth- 
man that he was injudicious in his appointments, and had an 
inveterate propensity to consult the interests of his relatives 
and friends before that of the public. One of his greatest er¬ 
rors in this respect was the removal of Amru Ibn A1 Aass from 
the government of Egypt, and the appointment of his own 
foster-brother, Abdallah Ibn Saad, in his place. This was the 
same Abdallah who, in acting as amanuensis to Mahomet, and 
writing down his revelations, had interpolated passages of ills 
own, sometimes of a ludicrous nature. For this and for his 
apostasy he had been pardoned by Mahomet at the solicitation 
of Othman, and had ever since acted with apparent zeal, his 
interest coinciding with his duty. 

He was of a courageous spirit, and one of the most expert 
horsemen of Arabia; but what might have fitted him to com¬ 
mand a horde of the desert was insufficient for the govern¬ 
ment of a conquered province. He was new and inexperienced 
in his present situation; whereas Amru had distinguished him¬ 
self as a legislator as well as a conqueror, and had already won 
the affections of the Egyptians by his attention to their inter¬ 
ests, and his respect for their customs and habitudes. His 
dismission was, therefore, resented by the people, and a dis¬ 
position was manifested to revolt against the new governor. 

The emperor Constantine, who had succeeded to his father 
Heraclius, hastened to take advantage of these circumstances. 
A fleet and army were sent against Alexandria under a prefect 


382 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


named Manuel. The Greeks in the city secretly co-operated 
with him, and the metropolis was, partly by force of arms, 
partly by treachery, recaptured by the imperialists without 
much bloodshed. 

Othman, made painfully sensible of the error he had com¬ 
mitted, hastened to revoke the appointment of his foster- 
brother, and reinstated Amru in the command in Egypt 
That able general went instantly against Alexandria with an 
army, in which were many Copts, irreconcilable enemies of 
the Greeks. Among these was the traitor Makawkas, who, 
from his knowledge of the country and his influence among 
its inhabitants, was able to procure abundant supplies for the 
army. 

The Greek garrison defended the city bravely and obsti¬ 
nately. Amru, enraged at having thus again to lay siege to a 
place which he had twice already taken, swore, by Allah, that 
if he should master it a third time, he would render it as easy 
of access as a brothel. He kept his word, for when he took 
the city he threw down the walls and demolished all the forti¬ 
fications. He was merciful, however, to the inhabitants, and. 
checked the fury of the Saracens, who were slaughtering all 
they met. A mosque was afterward erected on the spot at 
which he stayed the carnage, called the Mosque of Mercy. 
Manuel, the Greek general, found it expedient to embark with 
all speed with such of his troops as he could save, and make 
sail for Constantinople. 

Scarce, however, had Amru quelled every insurrection and 
secured the Moslem domination in Egypt, when he was again 
displaced from the government, and Abdallah Ibn Saad ap¬ 
pointed a second time in his stead. 

Abdallah had been deeply mortified by the loss of Alexan¬ 
dria, which had been ascribed to his incapacity; he was emu¬ 
lous too of the renown of Amru, and felt the necessity of 
vindicating his claims to command by some brilliant achieve¬ 
ment. The north of Africa presented a new field for Moslem 
enterprise. We allude to that vast tract extending west from 
the desert of Libya or Barca, to Cape Non, embracing more 
than two thousand miles of sea-coast; comprehending the 
ancient divisions of Mamarica, Cyrenaica, Carthage, Numidia, 
and Mauritania; or, according to modern geographical desig¬ 
nations, Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco. 

A few words respecting the historical vicissitudes of this 
once powerful region may not be inappropriate. The original 


MAIIOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


383 


inhabitants are supposed to have come at a remote time from 
Asia; or rather, it is said that an influx of Arabs drove the 
original inhabitants from the sea-coast to the mountains, and 
the borders of the interior desert, and continued their nomade 
and pastoral life along the shores of the Mediterranean. 
About nine hundred years before the Christian era, the Phoe- 
nicians of Tyre founded colonies along the coast; of these Can 
thage was the greatest. By degrees it extended its influence 
along the African shores and the opposite coast of Spain, and 
rose in prosperity and power until it became a rival republic 
to Rome. On the wars between Rome and Carthage it is need¬ 
less to dilate. They ended in the downfall of the Carthaginian 
republic and the domination of Rome over Northern Africa. 

This domination continued for about four centuries, until the 
Roman prefect Bonifacius invited over the Vandals from Spain 
to assist him in a feud with a political rival. The invitation 
proved fatal to Roman ascendancy. The Vandals, aided by 
the Moors and Berbers, and by numerous Christian sectarians 
recently expelled from the Catholic Church, aspired to gain 
possession of the country, and succeeded. Genseric, the Van¬ 
dal general, captured and pillaged Carthage, and having sub¬ 
jugated Northern Africa, built a navy, invaded Italy, and 
sacked Rome. The domination of the Vandals by sea and land 
lasted above half a century. In 533 and 534 Africa was re¬ 
gained by Belisarius for the Roman empire, and the Vandals 
were driven out of the land. After the departure of Beli¬ 
sarius the Moors rebelled, and made repeated attempts to get 
the dominion, but were as often defeated with great loss, and 
the Roman sway was once more established. 

All these wars and changes had a disastrous effect on the 
African provinces. The Vandals had long disappeared; many 
of the Moorish families had been extirpated; the wealthy 
inhabitants had fled to Sicily and Constantinople, and a stran¬ 
ger might wander whole days over regions once covered with 
towns and cities, and teeming with population, without meet¬ 
ing a human being. 

For near a century the country remained sunk in apathy 
and inaction, until now it was to be roused from its torpor by 
the all-pervading armies of Islam. 

Soon after the reappointment of Abdallah to the govern¬ 
ment of Egypt, he set out upon the conquest of this country, 
at the head of forty thousand Arabs. After crossing the 
western boundary of Egypt he had to traverse the desert of 


384 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS .. 


Libya, but bis army was provided with camels accustomed to 
the sandy wastes of Araoia, and, after a toilsome march, he en¬ 
camped before the walls of Tripoli, then, as now, one of the 
most wealthy and powerful cities of the Barbary coast. The 
place was well fortified, and made good resistance. A body of 
Greek troops which were sent to reinforce it were surprised 
by the besiegers on the sea-coast, and dispersed with great 
slaughter. 

The Roman prefect Gregorius having assembled an army of 
one hundred and twenty thousand men, a great proportion of 
whom were the hastily levied and undisciplined tribes of 
Barbary, advanced to defend his province. He was accom¬ 
panied by an Amazonian daughter of wonderful beauty, who 
had been taught to manage the horse, to draw the bow, and 
wield the scimetar, and who was. always at her father’s side in 
battle. 

Hearing of the approach'of this army, Abdallah suspended 
the siege and advanced to meet it. A brief jjarley took 
place between the hostile commanders. Abdallah proposed 
the usual alternatives, profession of Islamism or payment of 
tribute. Both were indignantly rejected. The armies engaged 
before the Avails of Tripoli. Abdallah, whose fame Avas staked 
on this enterprise, stimulated his troops by Avord and example, 
and charged the enemy repeatedly at the head of his squad¬ 
rons. Wherever he pressed the fortune of the day would in¬ 
cline in favor of the Moslems; but on the other hand Grego¬ 
rius fought with desperate bravery, as the fate of the province 
depended on this conflict ; and wherever he appeared liis 
daughter was at his side, dazzling all eyes by the splendor of 
her armor and the heroism of her achievements. The contest 
was long, arduous, and uncertain. It was not one drawn 
battle, but a succession of conflicts, extending through several 
days, beginning at early daAvn, but ceasing toward noon, 
when the intolerable heat of the sun obliged both armies to 
desist, and seek the shade of them tents. 

The prefect Gregorius was exasperated at being in a manner 
held at bay by an inferior force, Avhich he had expected to 
crush by the superiority of numbers. Seeing that Abdallah 
was the life and soul of his army, he proclaimed a reAvard of 
one hundred thousand pieces of gold and the hand of his 
daughter to the warrior who should bring him his head. 

The excitement caused among the Grecian youth by this 
tempting prize made the officers of Abdallah tremble for his 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


385 


safety. They represented to him the importance of his life to 
the army and the general cause, and prevailed upon him to 
keep aloof from the field of battle. His absence, however, pro¬ 
duced an immediate change, and the valor of his troops, 
hitherto stimulated by his presence, began to languish. 

Zobeir, a noble Arab of the tribe of Koreish, arrived at the 
field of battle with a small reinforcement, in the heat of one of 
the engagements. He found the troops fighting to a disadvan¬ 
tage, and looked round in vain for the general. Being told 
that he was in his tent, he hastened thither and reproached 
him with his inactivity. Abdallah blushed, but explained the 
reason of his remaining passive. “ Retort on the infidel com¬ 
mander his perfidious bribe,” cried Zobeir; “ proclaim that his 
daughter as a captive, and one hundred thousand pieces of 
gold, shall be the reward of the Moslem who brings his head.” 
The advice was adopted, as well as the following stratagem 
suggested by Zobeir. On the next morning Abdallah sent 
forth only sufficient force to keep up a defensive fight; but 
when the sun had reached its noontide height, and the panting 
troops retired as usual to their tents, Abdallah and Zobeir sal¬ 
lied forth at the head of the reserve, and charged furiously 
among the fainting Greeks. Zobeir singled out the prefect, 
and slew him after a well-contested fight. His daughter 
pressed forward to avenge his death, but was surrounded and 
made prisoner. The Grecian army was completely routed, and 
fled to the opulent town of Safetula, which was taken and 
sacked by the Moslems. 

The battle was over, Gregorius had fallen, but no one came 
forward to claim the reward set upon his head. His captive 
daughter, however, on beholding Zobeir, broke forth into 
tears and exclamations, and thus revealed the modest victor. 
Zobeir refused to accept the maiden or the gold. He fought, 
he said, for the faith, not for earthly objects, and looked for 
his reward in paradise. In honor of his achievements he was 
sent with tidings of this victory to the Caliph; but when he 
announced it, in the great mosque at Medina, in presence of the 
assembled people, he made no mention of his own services. 
His modesty enhanced his merits in the eyes of the public, and 
his name was placed by the Moslems beside of those of Khaled 
and Amru. 

Abdallah found his forces too much reduced and enfeebled 
by battle and disease to enable him to maintain possession of 
the country he had subdued, and after a campaign of fifteen 


386 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


months he led back his victorious, but diminished army into 
Egypt, encumbered with captives and laden with booty. 

He afterward, by the Caliph’s command, assembled an army 
in the Thebaid or Upper Egypt, and thence made numerous 
successful excursions into Nubia, the Christian king of which 
was reduced to make a humiliating treaty, by which he bound 
himself to send annually to the Moslem commander in Egypt 
a great number of Nubian or Ethiopian slaves by way of 
tribute. 


CHAPTEB XXXYI. 

MO AW YAH, EMIR OF SYRIA—HIS NAVAL VICTORIES — OTHMAN 
LOSES THE PROPHET’S RING—SUPPRESSES ERRONEOUS COPIES 
OF THE KORAN—CONSPIRACIES AGAINST HIM—HIS DEATH. 

Among the distinguished Moslems who held command of the 
distant provinces during the Caliphat of Othman, was Moa- 
wyah Ibn Abu Sofian. As his name denotes, he was the son of 
Abu Sofian, the early foe and subsequent proselyte of Ma¬ 
homet. On his father’s death he had become chief of the tribe 
of Koreish, and head of the family of Omeya or Ommiah. The 
late Caliph Omar, about four years before his death, had ap¬ 
pointed him emir, or governor of Syria, and he was continued 
in that office by Othman. He was between thirty and forty 
years of age, enterprising, courageous, of quick sagacity, ex¬ 
tended views, and lofty aims. Having the maritime coast and 
ancient ports of Syria under his command, he aspired to ex¬ 
pend the triumphs of the Moslem arms by sea as well as land. 
He had repeatedly endeavored, but in vain, to obtain permis¬ 
sion from Omar to make a naval expedition, that Caliph being 
always apprehensive of the too wide and rapid extension of the 
enterprises of his generals. Under Othman he was more suc¬ 
cessful, and in the twenty-seventh year of the Hegira was 
permitted to fit out a fleet, with which he launched forth on 
the Sea of Tarshish, or the Phoenician Sea, by both which 
names the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea was desig¬ 
nated in ancient times. 

His first enterprise was against the island of Cyprus, which 
was still held in allegiance to the emperor of Constantinople. 



MAHOMET AND BIS SUCCESSORS. 387 

The Christian garrison was weak, and the inhabitants of the 
island soon submitted to pay tribute to the Caliph. 

His next enterprise was against the island of Aradus, where 
he landed his troops and besieged the city or fortress, batter¬ 
ing it with military engines. The inhabitants made vigorous 
resistance, repelled him from the island, and it was only after 
he had come a second time, with superior force, that he was 
able to subdue it. He then expelled the natives, demolished 
the fortifications, and set fire to the city. 

His most brilliant achievement, however, was a battle with 
a large fleet, in which the emperor was cruising in the Phoeni¬ 
cian Sea. It was called in Arab history The Battle of Masts, 
from the forest of masts in the imperial fleet. The Christians 
went into action singing psalms and elevating the cross, the 
Moslems repeating texts of the Koran, shouting Allah Achbar, 
and waving the standard of Islam. The battle was severe; 
the imperial fleet dispersed, and the emperor escaped by dint 
of sails and oars. 

Moawyah now swept the seas victoriously, made landings 
on Crete and Malta, captured the island of Rhodes, demolished 
its famous colossal statue of brass, and, having broken it to 
pieces, transported the fragments'to Alexandria, where they 
were sold to a Jewish merchant of Edissa, and were sufficient 
to load nine hundred camels. He had another fight with a 
Christian fleet in the bay of Feneke, by Castel Rosso, in which 
both parties claimed the victory. He even carried his expedi¬ 
tions along the coasts of Asia Minor, and to the very port of 
Constantinople. 

These naval achievements, a new feature in Arab warfare, 
rendered Moawyah exceedingly popular in Syria, and laid the 
foundation for that power and importance to which he subse¬ 
quently attained. 

It is worthy of remark how the triumphs of an ignorant 
people, who had heretofore dwelt obscurely in the midst of 
their deserts, were overrunning all the historical and poetical 
regions of antiquity. They had invaded and subdued the once 
mighty empires on land, they had now launched forth from 
the old scriptural ports of Tyre and Sidon, swept- the Sea of 
Tarshish, and were capturing the isles rendered famous by 
classic fable. 

In the midst of these foreign successes an incident, con¬ 
sidered full of sinister import, happened to Othman. He ac¬ 
cidentally dropped in a brook a silver ring, on which was 


388 


MAHOMET AND HIS STJCCESSOBS. 


inscribed ‘‘Mahomet the apostle of God.” It had originally 
belonged to Mahomet, and since his death had been worn by 
Abu Beker, Omar, and Othman, as the symbol of command, 
as rings had been considered throughout the East from the 
earliest times. The brook was searched with the most anxious 
care, but the ring was not to be found. This was an ominous 
loss in the eyes of the superstitious Moslems. 

It happened about this time that, scandalized by the various 
versions of the Koran, and the disputes that prevailed concern 
ing their varying texts, he decreed, in a council of the chief 
Moslems,{that all copies of the Koran which did not agree with 
the genuine one in the hands of Hafza, the widow of Mahomet, 
should be burnt. Seven copies of Hafza’s Koran were accord¬ 
ingly made; six were sent to Mecca, Yemen, Syria, Bahrein, 
Bassora, and Cufa, and one was retained in Medina. All 
copies varying from these were to be given to the flames. 
This measure caused Othman to be called the Gatherer of the 
Koran. It, at any rate, prevented any further vitiation of the 
sacred Scripture of Islam, which has remained unchanged 
from that time to the present. Besides this pious act, Othman 
caused a wall to be built round the sacred house of the Caaba, 
and enlarged and beautified the mosque of the prophet in 
Medina. 

Notwithstanding all this, disaffection and intrigue were 
springing up round the venerable Caliph in Medina. He was 
brave, open-handed, and munificent, but he wanted shrewd¬ 
ness and discretion; was prone to favoritism; very credulous, 
and easily deceived. 

Murmurs rose against him on all sides, and daily increased 
in virulence. His conduct, both public and private, was re¬ 
viewed, and circumstances, which had been passed by as 
trivial, were magnified into serious offences. He was charged 
with impious presumption in having taken his stand, on being 
first made Caliph, on the uppermost step of the pulpit, where 
Mahomet himself used to stand, whereas Abu Beker had stood 
one step lower, and Omar two. A graver accusation, and one 
too well merited, was that he had displaced men of worth, 
eminent for their services, and given their places to his own 
relatives and favorites. This was especially instanced in dis¬ 
missing Amru Ibn al Aass from the government of Egypt, and 
appointing in his stead his own brother Abdallah Ibn Saad, 
who had once been proscribed by Mahomet. Another accusa¬ 
tion was, that he had lavished the public money upon para- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


389 


sites, giving one hundred thousand dinars to one, four hundred 
thousand to another, and no less than five hundred and four 
thousand upon his secretary of state, Merwan Ibn Hakem, 
who had, it was said, an undue ascendency over him, and was, 
in fact, the subtle and active spirit of his government. The 
last sum, it was alleged, was taken out of a portion of the 
spoils of Africa, which had been set apart for the family of the 
prophet. 

The ire of the old Caliph was kindled at having his lavish 
liberality thus charged upon him as a crime. He mounted the 
pulpit and declared that the money in the treasury belonged to 
God, the distribution to the Caliph at his own discretion as 
successor of the prophet; and he prayed God to confound who¬ 
ever should gainsay what he had set forth. 

Upon this Ammar Ibn Yaser, one of the primitive Moslems, 
of whom Mahomet himself had said that he was filled with 
faith from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, rose 
and disputed the words of Othman, whereupon some of the 
Caliph’s kindred of the house of Ommiah fell upon the venera¬ 
ble Ammar and beat him until he fainted. 

The outrage offered to the person of one of the earliest disci¬ 
ples and especial favorites of the propnet was promulgated far 
and wide, and contributed to the general discontent, which 
now assumed the aspect of rebellion. The ringleader of the 
disaffected was Ibn Caba, formerly a Jew. This son of mis¬ 
chief made a factious tour from Yemen to Hidschaf, thence to 
Bassora, to Cufa. to Syria, and Egypt, decrying the Caliph and 
the emirs he had appointed; declaring that the Caliph at had 
been usurped by Othman from A li, to whom it rightly be¬ 
longed, as the nearest relative of the prophet, and suggesting 
by word of mouth and secret correspondence, that the mal¬ 
contents should assemble simultaneously in various parts 
under pretext of a pilgrimage to Mecca. 

The plot of the renegade Jew succeeded* In the fulness of 
time deputations arrived from all parts. One amounting to 
a hundred and fifty persons from Bassora; another of twe 
hundred under Malec Alashtar from Cufa; a third of six hun 
dred from Egypt headed by Mahomet, the son of Abu Beker, 
and brother of Ayesha, together with numbers of a sect of 
zealots called Karegites, who took the lead. These deputies 
encamped like an army within a league of Medina and sum¬ 
moned the Caliph by message either to red^«s their grievances 
or to abdicate. 


890 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Othman in consternation applied to Ali to go forth and pacify 
the multitude. He consented on condition that Othman would 
previously make atonement for his errors from the pulpit. 
Harassed and dismayed, the aged Caliph mounted the pulpit, 
and with a voice broken by sobs and tears, exclaimed, <s My 
God, I beg pardon of thee, and turn to thee with penitence and 
sorrow.” The whole assemblage were moved and softened, and 
wept with the Caliph. 

Merwan, the intriguing and well-paid secretary of Othman, 
and the soul of his government, had been absent during these 
occurrences, and on returning reproached the Caliph with what 
he termed an act of weakness. Having his permission, he ad¬ 
dressed the populace in a strain that soon roused them to ten¬ 
fold ire. Ali, hereupon, highly indignant, renounced any 
further interference in the matter. 

Naile, the wife of Othman, who had heard the words of 
Merwan, and beheld the fury of the people, warned her hus¬ 
band of the storm gathering over his head, and prevailed upon 
him again to solicit the mediation of Ali. The latter suffered 
himself to be persuaded, and went forth among the insurgents. 
Partly by good words and liberal donations from the treasury, 
partly by a written promise from the Caliph to redress all their 
grievances, the insurgents were quieted, all but the deputies 
from Egypt who came to complain against the Caliph’s foster- 
brother, Abdallah Ibn Saacl, who they said had oppressed them 
with exactions, and lavished their blood in campaigns in Bar¬ 
bary, merely for his own fame and profit, without retaining a 
foothold in the country. To pacify these complainants, Oth¬ 
man displaced Abdallah from the government, and left them 
to name his successor. They unanimously named Mahomet, 
the brother of Ayesha, who had in fact been used by that in¬ 
triguing woman as a firebrand to kindle this insurrection; her 
object being to get Telha appointed to the Caliphat. 

The insurgent camp now broke up. Mahomet with his fol¬ 
lowers set out to take possession of his post, and the aged 
Caliph flattered himself he would once more be left in peace. 

Three days had Mahomet and his train been on their journey, 
when they were overtaken by a black slave on a dromedary. 
They demanded who he was, and whither he was travelling so 
rapidly. He gave himself out as a slave of the secretary Mer¬ 
wan, bearing a message from the Caliph to his emir in Egypt. 
* ‘ I am the emir, ” said Mahomet. ‘ ‘ My errand, ” said the slave, 
“ is to the emir Abdallah Ibn Saad.” He was asked if he had 


MAHOMET AND 1IIS SUCCESSORS. 


391 


a letter, and on Ms prevaricating was searched. A letter was 
found concealed in a water-flask. It was from the Caliph, 
briefly ordering the emir, on the arrival of Mahomet Ibn Abu 
Beker, to make way with him secretly, destroy his diploma, 
and imprison, until further orders, those who had brought 
complaints to Medina. 

Mahomet Ibn Abu Beker returned furious to Medina, and 
showed the perfidious letter to Ali, Zobeir, and Telha, who 
repaired with him to Otliman. The latter denied any knowl¬ 
edge of the letter. It must then, they said, be a forgery of 
Merwan’s, and requested that he might be summoned. Oth- 
man would not credit such treason on the part of his secretary, 
and insisted it must have been a treacherous device of one of 
his enemies. Medina was now in a ferment. There was a 
gathering of the people. All were incensed at such an atro¬ 
cious breach of faith, and insisted that if the letter originated 
with Othman, he should resign the Caliphat; if with Merwan, 
that he should receive the merited punishment. Their de¬ 
mands had no effect upon the Caliph. 

Mahomet Ibn Abu Beker now sent off swift messengers to 
recall the recent insurgents from the provinces, who were re • 
turning home, and to call in aid from the neighboring tribes. 
The dwelling of Othman was beleaguered; the alternative was 
left him to deliver up Merwan or to abdicate. He refused both. 
His life was now threatened. He barricadoed himself in his 
dwelling. The supply of water was cut off. If he made his 
appearance on the terraced roof he was assailed with stones. 
Aii, Zobeir, and Telha endeavored to appease the multitude, 
but they were deaf to their entreaties. Saad Ibn al Aass ad¬ 
vised the Caliph, as the holy month was at hand, to sally forth 
on a pilgrimage to Mecca, as the piety of the undertaking and 
the sanctity of the pilgrim garb would protect him. Othman 
rejected the advice. “If they seek my life,” said he, “they 
will not respect the pilgrim garb.” 

Ali, Zobeir, and Telha, seeing the danger imminent, sent their 
three sons, Hassan, Abdallah, and Mahomet, to protect the 
house. They stationed themselves by the door, and for some 
time kept the rebels at bay; but the rage of the latter knew 
no bounds. They stormed the house; Hassan was wounded 
in its defence. The rebels rushed in ; among the foremost 
was Mahomet, the brother of Ayesha, and Ammer Ibn Yaser, 
whom Othman had ordered to be beaten. They found the 
venerable Caliph seated on a cushion, his beard flowing on his 


392 


MAHOMET AND HIS SDCCESSOBS. 


breast; the Koran open on his lap, and his wife Naile beside 
him. 

One of the rebels struck him on the head, another stabbed 
him repeatedly with a sword, and Mahomet Ibn Abu Beker 
thrust a javelin into his body after he was dead. His wife was 
wounded in endeavoring to protect him, and her life was only 
saved through the fidelity of a slave. His house was plundered, 
as were some of the neighboring houses, and two chambers of 
the treasury. 

As soon as the invidious Ayesha heard that the murder was 
accomplished, she went forth in hypocritical guise loudly be¬ 
wailing the death of a man to whom she had secretly been hos¬ 
tile, and joining with the Ommiah family in calling for blood 
revenge. 

The noble and virtuous Ali, with greater sincerity, was in¬ 
censed at his sons for not sacrificing their lives in defence of 
the Caliph, and reproached the sons of Telha and Zobeir with 
being lukewarm. ‘ ‘ Why are you so angry, father of Hassan?” 
said Telha; “had Othman given up Merwan this evil would 
not have happened.” 

In fact, it has been generally affirmed that the letter really 
was written by Merwan, without the knowledge of the Caliph, 
and was intended to fall into the hands of Mahomet, and pro¬ 
duce the effect which resulted from it. Merwan, it is alleged, 
having the charge of the correspondence of the Caliphat, had 
repeatedly abused the confidence of the weak and superan¬ 
nuated Othman in like manner, but not with such a nefarious 
aim. Of late he had secretly joined the cabal against the 
Caliph. 

The body of Othman lay exposed for three days, and was 
then buried in the clothes in which he was slain, unwashed 
and without any funeral ceremony. He was eighty-two year 3 
old at the time of his death, and had reigned nearly twelve 
years. The event happened in the thirty-fifth year of the 
Hegira, in the year 655 of the Christian era. Notwithstanding 
his profusion and the sums lavished upon his favorites, immense 
treasures were found in his dwelling, a considerable part of 
which he had set apart for charitable purposes. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 393 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

CANDIDATES FOR THE CALIPHAT—INAUGURATION OF ALI, FOURlli 
CALIPH—HE UNDERTAKES MEASURES OF REFORM—THEIR CONSE¬ 
QUENCES—CONSPIRACY OF AYESHA—SHE GETS POSSESSION O* 
BASSORA. 

We have already seen that the faith of Islam had begun to 
lose its influence in binding together the hearts of the faithful, 
and uniting their feelings and interests in one common cause. 
The factions which sprang up at the very death of Mahomet 
had increased with the election of every successor, and candi¬ 
dates for the succession multiplied as the brilliant successes of 
the Moslem arms elevated victorious generals to popularity and 
renown. On the assassination of Othman, four candidates 
were presented for the Caliphat; and the fortuitous assemblage 
of deputies from the various parts of the Moslem empire 
threatened to make the election difficult and tumultuous. 

The most prominent candidate was Ali, who had the strongest 
natural claim, being cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, and 
his children by Fatima being the only posterity of the prophet. 
He was of the noblest branch of the noble race of Koreish. He 
possessed the three qualities most prized by Arabs—courage, 
eloquence, and munificence. His intrepid spirit had gained 
him from the prophet the appellation of The Lion of God; 
specimens of his eloquence remain in some verses and sayings 
preserved among the Arabs; and his munificence was mani¬ 
fested in sharing among others, every Friday, what remained 
in the treasury. Of his magnanimity we have given repeated 
instances; his noble scorn of everything false and mean, and 
the absence in his conduct of everything like selfish intrigue. 

His right to the Caliphat was supported by the people of Cufa, 
the Egyptians, and a great part of the Arabs who were desirous 
of a line of Caliphs of the blood of Mahomet. He was opposed, 
however, as formerly, by the implacable Ayesha, who, though 
well stricken in years, retained an unforgiving recollection ot 
his having once questioned her chastity. 

A second candidate was Zobeir, the same warrior who dis¬ 
tinguished himself by his valor in the campaign of Barbary, by 
his modesty in omitting to mention his achievements, and in 
declining to accept their reward. His pretensions to the Cali' 
phat were urged by the people of Bassora- 


394 


MAIIOMET ANJ) HIS SUCCESSORS. 


A third candidate was Telha, who had been one of the six 
electors of Otliman, and who had now the powerful support of 
Ayesha. 

A fourth candidate was Moawyah, the military governor of 
Syria, and popular from his recent victories by sea and land. 
He had, moreover, immense wealth to hack his claims, and 
was head of the powerful tribe of Koreish; but he was distant 
from the scene of election, and in his absence his partisans 
could only promote confusion and delay. 

It was a day of tumult and trouble in Medina. The body of 
Othman was still unburied. His wife Naile, at the instigation 
of Ayesha, sent off his bloody vest to be carried through the 
distant provinces, a ghastly appeal to the passions of the in¬ 
habitants. 

The people, apprehending discord and disunion, clamored 
for the instant nomination of a Caliph. The deputations, which 
had come from various parts w T ith complaints against Othman, 
became impatient. There were men from Babylonia and 
Mesopotamia, and other parts of Persia; from Syria and 
Egypt, as well as from the three divisions of Arabia; these as¬ 
sembled tumultuously, and threatened the safety of the three 
candidates, Ali, Telha, and Zobeir, unless an election were 
made in four-and-twenty hours. 

In this dilemma, some of the principal Moslems repaired to 
Ali, and entreated him to accept the office. He consented 
with reluctance, but would do nothing clandestinely, and re¬ 
fused to take their hands, the Moslem mode at that time of 
attesting fealty, unless it were in public assembly at the 
mosque; lest he should give cause of cavil or dispute to his 
rivals. He refused, also, to make any promises or conditions. 
“ If I am elected Caliph,” said he, “ I will administer the gov¬ 
ernment with independence, and deal with you all according 
to my ideas of justice. If you elect another, I will yield obedi¬ 
ence to him, and be ready to serve him as his vizier.” They 
assented to everything he said, and again entreated him to 
accept, for the good of the people and of the faith. 

On the following morning there was a great assemblage of 
the people at the mosque, and Ali presented himself at the 
portal. He appeared in simple Arab style, clad in a thin cot¬ 
ton garb girded round his loins, a coarse turban, and using a 
bow as a walking-staff. He took off his slippers in reverence 
of the place, an^ entered the mosque, bearing them in his left 
hand. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


395 


Finding that Telka and Zobeir were not present, he caused 
them to be sent for. They came, and knowing the state of 
the public mind, and that all immediate opposition would be 
useless, offered their hands in token of allegiance. Ali paused, 
and asked them if their hearts went with their hands. “Speak 
frankly,” said he; “if you disapprove of my election, and will 
accept the office, I will give my hand to either of you.” They 
declared their perfect satisfaction, and gave their hands. 
Telha’s right arm had been maimed in the battle of Ohod, and 
he stretched it forth with difficulty. The circumstance struck 
the Arabs as an evil omen. “ It is likely to be a lame business 
that is begun with a lame hand,” muttered a bystander. 
Subsequent events seemed to justify the foreboding. 

Moawyali, the remaining candidate, being absent at his gov¬ 
ernment in Syria, the whole family of Ommiah, of which he 
was the head, withdrew from the ceremony. This likewise 
boded future troubles. 

After the inauguration, Telha and Zobeir, with a view, it is 
said, to excite disturbance, applied to Ali to investigate and 
avenge the death of Othman. Ali, who knew that such a 
measure would call up a host of enemies, evaded the insidious 
proposition. It was not the moment, he said, for such an in¬ 
vestigation. The event had its origin in old enmities and dis 
contents instigated by the devil, and when the devil once 
gained a foothold, he never relinquished it willingly. The very 
measure they recommended was one of the devil’s suggesting, 
for the purpose of fomenting disturbances. “ However,’’added 
he, “if you will point out the assassins of Othman, I will not 
fail to punish them according to their guilt.” 

While Ali thus avoided the dangerous litigation, he endea v¬ 
ored to cultivate the good will of the Koreishites, and to 
strengthen himself against apprehended difficulties with the 
family of Ommiah. Telha and Zobeir, being disconcerted in 
their designs, now applied for important commands—Telha 
for the government of Cufa, and Zobeir for that of Bassora; 
but Ali again declined complying with their wishes; observing 
that he needed such able counsellors at hand in his present 
emergencies. They afterward separately obtained permission 
from him to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and set off on that 
devout errand with piety on their lips, but crafty policy in 
their breasts; Ayesha had already repaired to the holy city, 
bent upon opposition to the government of the man she hated. 

Ali was now Caliph, but did not feel himself securely fixed 


396 


MAHOMET AND HIS S HOC ESSO US. 


in his authority. Many abuses had grown up during tho 
dotage of his predecessor, which called for redress, and most 
of the governments of provinces were in the hands of persons 
in whose affection and fidelity he felt no confidence. He de¬ 
termined upon a general reform; and as a first step, to remove 
from office all the governors who had been appointed by the 
superannuated Othman. This measure was strongly opposed 
by some of his counsellors. They represented to him that he 
was not yet sufficiently established to venture upon such 
changes; and that he would make powerful enemies of men 
who, if left in office, would probably hasten to declare allegi- 
ence to him, now that he was Caliph. 

Ali was not to be persuaded. “ Sedition,”he said, “like fire, 
is easily extinguished at the commencement; but the longer it 
burns the more fiercely it blazes.” 

He was advised, at least, to leave his formidable rival Moa- 
wyah, for the present, in the government of Syria, as he was 
possessed of great wealth and influence, and a powerful army, 
and might rouse that whole province to rebellion; and in such 
case might be joined by Telha and Zobeir, who were both dis¬ 
appointed and disaffected men. He had recently shown his 
influence over the feelings of the people under his command; 
when the bloody vest of Othman arrived in the province, he 
had displayed it from the pulpit of the mosque in Damascus. 
The mosque resounded with lamentations mingled with clam¬ 
ors for the revenge of blood; for Othman had won the hearts 
of the people of Syria by his munificence. Some of the noblest 
inhabitants of Damascus swore to remain separate from their 
wives, and not to lay their heads on a pillow until blood for 
blood had atoned for the death of Othman. Finally the vest 
had been hoisted as a standard, and had fired the Syrian army 
with a desire for vengeance. 

Ali’s counsellor represented all these things to him. ‘ ‘ Sufi 
fer Moawyah, therefore,” added he, “to remain in command 
until he has acknowledged your government, and then he may 
be displaced without turmoil. Nay, I will pledge myself to 
bring him bound hand and foot into your presence.” 

Ali spurned at this counsel, and swore he would practise no 
such treachery, but would deal with Moawyah with the sword 
alone. He commenced immediately his pian of reform, with 
Ihe nomination of new governors devoted to his service. Ab¬ 
dallah Ibn Abbas was appointed to Arabia Felix, Ammar Ibn 
Sahel to Cufa, Othman Ibn Hanif to Bassora, Sahel Ibn Hanif 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


397 


to Syria, and Saad Ibn Kais to Egypt. These generals lost no 
time in repairing to their respective governments, but the re¬ 
sult soon convinced Ali that he had been precipitate. 

Jaali, the governor of Arabia Felix, readily resigned his post 
to Abdallah Ibn Abbas, and retired to Mecca; but he took with 
him the public treasure, and delivered it into the hands of 
Ayesha, and her confederates Telha and Zobeir, who were 
already plotting rebellion. 

Othman Ibn Hanif, on arriving at Bassorah to take the com¬ 
mand, found the people discontented and rebellious, and 
having no force to subjugate them, esteemed himself fortunate 
in escaping from their hands and returning to the Caliph. 

When Ammar Ibn Sahel reached the confines of Cufa, he 
learnt that the people were unanimous in favor of Abu Musa 
Alashari, their present governor, and determined to support 
him by fraud or force. Ammar had no disposition to contend 
with them, the Cubans being reputed the most treacherous and 
perfidious people of the East; so he turned the head of his 
horse, and journeyed back mortified and disconcerted to Ali. 

Saad Ibn Kais was received in Egypt with murmurs by the 
inhabitants, who were indignant at the assassination of Oth¬ 
man, and refused to submit to the government of Ah until jus¬ 
tice was done upon the perpetrators of that murder. Saad 
prudently, therefore, retraced his steps to Medina. 

Sahel Ibn Hanif had no better success in Syria. He was met 
at Tabuc by a body of cavalry, who demanded his name and 
business. “For my name,” said he, “I am Sahel, the son of 
Hanif; and for my business, I am governor of this province, as 
lieutenant of the Caliph Ali, commander of the Faithful.” 
They assured him in reply, that Syria had already an able 
governor in Moawyah, son of Abu Sofian, and that to their 
certain knowledge there was not room in the province for the 
sole of his foot; so saying, they unsheathed their scimetars. 

The new governor, who was not provided with a body of 
troops sufficient to enforce his authority, returned also to the 
Caliph with this intelligence. Thus of the five governors so 
promptly sent forth by Ali in pursuance of his great plan of 
reform, Abdallah Ibn Abbas was the only one permitted to 
assume his post. 

When Ali received tidings of the disaffection of Syria he 
wrote a letter to Moawyah, claiming his allegiance, and trans¬ 
mitted it by an especial messenger. The latter was detained 
many days by the Syrian commander, and then sent back, 


898 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


accompanied by another messenger, bearing a sealed letter 
superscribed “From Moawyah to Ali.” The two couriers 
arrived at Medina in the cool of the evening, the hour of 
concourse, and passed through the multitude bearing the letter 
aloft on a staff, so that all could see the superscription. The 
people thronged after the messengers into the presence of Ali. 
On opening the letter it was found to be a perfect blank iii 
token of contempt and defiance. 

Ah soon learned that this was no empty bravado. He was 
apprised by his own courier that an army of sixty thousand 
men was actually on foot in Syria, and that the bloody gar¬ 
ment of Othman, the standard of rebellion, was erected in the 
mosque at Damascus. Upon this he solemnly called Allah and 
the prophet to witness that he was not guilty of that murder- 
but made active preparations to put down the rebellion by 
force of arms, sending missives into ah the provinces demand¬ 
ing the assistance of the faithful. 

The Moslems were now divided into two parties; those who 
adhered to All, among whom were the people of Medina gen¬ 
erally: and the Motazeli, or Separatists, who were in the oppo¬ 
sition. The latter were headed by the able and vindictive 
Ayesha, who had her headquarters at Mecca, and with the 
aid of Telha and Zobeir, was busy organizing an insurrection 
She had induced the powerful family of Ommiah to join her 
cause, and had sent couriers to all the governors of provinces 
whom Ali had superseded, inviting them to unite in the re¬ 
bellion. The treasure brought to her by Jaali, the displaced 
governor of Arabia Felix, furnished her with the means of 
war, and the bloody garment of Othman proved a powerful 
auxiliary. 

A council of the leaders of this conspiracy was held at 
Mecca.. Some inclined to join the insurgents in Syria, but it 
'was objected that Moawyah was sufficiently powerful in that 
country without their aid. The intrepid Ayesha was for pro¬ 
ceeding immediately to Medina and attacking Ali in his 
capital, but it was represented that the people of Medina were 
unanimous m his favor, and too powerful to be assailed with 
success. It was finally determined to march for Bassora 
Telha assuring them that he had a strong party in that city’ 
and pledging himself for its surrender. 

A proclamation was accordingly made by sound of trumpet 
through the streets of Mecca to the following effect- 
“In the name of the Most High-God. Ayesha, Mother of the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


890 


Faithful, accompanied by the chiefs T.fha and Zobeir, is going 
in person to Bassora. All those of the faithful who burn with 
a desire to defend the faith and avenge the death of the Caliph 
Othman, have only to present themselves and they shall be 
furnished with all necessaries for the journey.” 

Ayesha sallied forth from one of the gates of Mecca, borne 
in a litter placed on the back of a strong camel named Alascar. 
Telha and Zobeir attended her on each side, followed by six 
hundred persons of some note, all mounted on camels, and a 
promiscuous multitude of about six thousand on foot. 

After marching some distance, the motley host stopped to 
refresh themselves on the bank of a rivulet near a village. 
Their arrival aroused the dogs of the village, who surrounded 
Ayesha and barked at her most clamorously. Like all Arabs, 
she was superstitious, and considered this an evil omen. Her 
apprehensions were increased on learning that the name of the 
village was Jowab. “My trust is in God,” exclaimed she, 
solemnly. “To him do I turn in time of trouble”—a text from 
the Koran, used by Moslems in tune of extreme danger. In 
fact, she called to mind some proverb of the prophet about the 
dogs of Jowab, and a prediction that one of his wives would be 
barked at by them when in a situation of imminent peril. ‘ ‘ I 
will go no further,” cried Ayesha; “I will halt here for the 
night.” Bo saying, she struck her camel on the leg to make 
him kneel that she might alight. 

Telha and Zobeir, dreading any delay, brought some peasants 
whom they had suborned to assign a different name to the vil¬ 
lage, and thus quieted her superstitious fears. About the same 
time some horsemen, likewise instructed by them, rode up 
with a false report that Ali was not far distant with a body of 
troops. Ayesha hesitated no longer, but mounting nimbly on 
her camel, pressed to the head of her little army, and they all 
pushed forward with increased expedition toward Bassora. 
Arrived before the city, they had hoped, from the sanguine 
declarations of Telha, to see it throw open its gates to receive 
them; the gates, however, remained closely barred. Othman 
Ibn Hanef, whom Ali had sent without success to assume the 
government of Cufa, was now in command at Bassora, whither 
he had been invited by a part of the inhabitants. 

Ayesha sent a summons to the governor to come forth and 
join the standard of the faithful, or at least to throw open his 
gates; but he was a timid, undecided man, and confiding the 
defence of the city to his lieutenant Ammar, retired in great 


400 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


tribulation within his own dwelling in the citadel, and went to 
prayers. 

Ammar summoned the people to arms, and called a meeting 
of the principal inhabitants in the mosque. He soon found 
out, to his great discouragement, that the people were nearly 
equally divided into two factions—one for Ali, since he was 
regularly elected Caliph, the other composed of partisans of 
Telha. The parties, instead of deliberating, fell to reviling, 
and ended by throwing dust in each other’s faces. 

In the mean time Ayesha and her host approached the walls, 
and many of the inhabitants went forth to meet her. Telha 
and Zobeir alternately addressed the multitude, and were 
followed by Ayesha, who harangued them from her camel. 
Her voice, which she elevated that it might be heard by all, 
became shrill and sharp, instead of intelligible, and provoked 
the merriment of some of the crowd. A dispute arose as to 
the justice of her appeal; mutual revilings again took place 
between the parties; they gave each other the lie, and again 
threw dust in each other’s faces. One of the men of Bassora 
then turned and reproached Ayesha. ‘ ‘ Shame on thee, oh 
Mother of the Faithful!” said he. ‘ ‘ The murder of the Caliph 
was a grievous crime, but was a less abomination than thy 
forgetfulness of the modesty of thy sex. Wherefore dost thou 
abandon thy quiet home, and thy protecting veil, and ride 
forth like a man barefaced on that accursed camel, to foment 
quarrels and dissensions among the faithful?” 

Another of the crowd scoffed at Telha and Zobeir. “You 
have brought your mother with you,” cried he; “ why did you 
not also bring your wives?” 

Insults were soon followed by blows, swords were drawn, a 
skirmish ensued, and they fought until the hour of prayer 
separated them. 

Ayesha sat down before Bassora with her armed host, and 
some days passed in alternate skirmishes and negotiations. 
At length a truce was agreed upon, until deputies could be 
sent to Medina to learn the cause of these dissensions among 
the Moslems, and whether Telha and Zobeir agreed voluntarily 
to the election of Ali, or did so on compulsion: if the former, 
they should be considered as rebels; if the latter, their parti¬ 
sans in Bassora should be considered justified in upholding 
them. 

The insurgents, however, only acquiesced in this agreement 
to get the governor in their power, and so gain possession of 


MAHOMET AND Hit, SUCCESSORS. 


401 


the city. They endeavored to draw him to their camp by 
friendly messages, but he apparently suspected their inten¬ 
tions, and refused to come forth until the answer should be re¬ 
ceived from Medina. Upon this Telha and Zobeir, taking ad¬ 
vantage of a stormy night, gained an entrance into the city 
with a chosen band, and surprised the governor in the mosque 
where they took him prisoner, after killing forty of his guard. 
They sent to Ayesha to know what they should do with their 
captive. “Let him be put to death,” was her fierce reply. 
Upon this one of her women interceded. “I adjure thee,” said 
she, ‘ ‘ in the name of Allah and the companions of the apostle, 
do not slay him.” Ayesha was moved by this adjuration, and 
commuted his punishment into forty stripes and imprison¬ 
ment. He was doomed, however, to suffer still greater evils 
before he escaped from the hands of his captors. His beard 
was plucked out hair' by hair, one of the most disgraceful 
punishments that can be inflicted on.an Arab. His eyebrows 
were served in the same manner, and he was then contemptu¬ 
ously set at liberty. 

The city of Bassora was now taken possession of without 
further resistance. Ayesha entered it in state, supported by 
Telha and Zobeir, and followed by her troops and adherents. 
The inhabitants were treated with kindness, as friends who 
had acted through error; and every exertion was made to 
secure their good-will, and to incense them against Ali, who 
was represented as a murderer and usurper. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

ALI DEFEATS THE REBELS UNDER AYESHA—HIS TREATMENT 
OF HER. 

When Ali heard of the revolt at Mecca, and the march 
against Bassora, he called a general meeting in the mosque, 
and endeavored to stir up the people to arm and follow him in 
pursuit of the rebels; but, though he spoke with his usual* 
eloquence, and was popular in Medina, a coldness and apathy 
pervaded the assembly. Some dreaded a civil war; others 
recollected that the leader of the rebels, against whom they 
were urged to take up arms, was Ayesha, the favorite wife of 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


£t--y 

the prophet, the Mother of the Faithful; others doubted 
whether Ali might not, in some degree, be implicated in the 
death of Othman, which had been so artfully charged against 
him. 

At length a Moslem of distinction, Ziyad Ibn Hantelah, rose 
with generous warmth, and stepping up to Ali, ‘ ‘ Let who¬ 
soever, will hold back,” cried he; ‘‘we will go forward.” 

At the same time two Ansars, or doctors of the law, men of 
great weight, pronounced with oracular voice, “ The Imam 
Othman, master of the two testimonies, did not die by the 
hand of the master of the two testimonies;” * that is to say, ] 
“ Othman was not slain by Ali.” 

The Arabs are a mercurial people, and acted upon by sudden 
impulses. The example of Ziyad, and the declaration of the 
two Ansars, caused an immediate excitement. Abu Kotada, i 
an Ansar of distinction, drew his sword. “The apostle of 
God,” said he, “upon whom be peace, girt me with this sword. 
It has long been sheathed. I now devote it to the destruction 
of these deceivers of the faithful. ” 

A matron in a transport of enthusiasm exclaimed, “Oh 
Commander of the Faithful, if it were permitted by our law, I 
myself would go with thee; but here is my cousin, dearer to me 
than my own life; he shall follow thee and partake of thy for¬ 
tunes.” 

Ali profited by the excitement of the moment, and making a 
hasty levy marched out of Medina at the head of about nine 
hundred men, eager to overtake, the rebels before they should 
reach Bassora. Hearing, however, that Ayesha was already 
in possession of that city, he halted at a place called Arrabdah 
until he should be joined by reinforcements; sending messen¬ 
gers to Abu Musa Alashair, governor of Cufa, and to various 
other commanders, ordering speedy succor. He was soon 
joined by his eldest son Hassan, who undertook to review his 
conduct and lecture him on his policy. “ I told you,” said he, 
“when the Caliph Othman was besieged, to go out of the city, 
lest you should be implicated in his death. I told you not to 
be inaugurated until deputies from the Arabian tribes were 
present. Lastly, I told you when Ayesha and her two con¬ 
federates took the field, to keep at home until they should be 


* The two testimonies mean the two fundamental beliefs of the Moslem creed:* 
“ There is but one God. Mahomet is the apostle of God.” The Caliph, as Imam or: 
pontiff of the Mussulman religion, is master of the two testimonies. 






MAHOMET AND HIS SUCOESSOIIS. 


403 


pacified; so that, should any mischief result, you might not be 
made responsible. You have not heeded my advice, and the 
consequence is that you may now be murdered to-morrow, 
with nobody to blame but yourself.” 

Ali listened with impatience to this filial counsel, or rather 
censure; when it was finished he replied, “Had I left the city 
when Othman was besieged, I should myself have been sur¬ 
rounded. Had I waited for my inauguration until all the 
tribes came in, I should have lost the votes of the people of 
Medina, the ‘Helpers,’ who have the privilege of disposing of 
the government. Had I remained at home after my enemies 
had taken the field, like a wild beast lurking in its hole, I 
should like a wild beast have been digged out and destroyed. 
If I do not look after my own affairs, who will look after 
them? If I do not defend myself, who will defend me? Such 
are my reasons for acting as I have acted; and now, my son, 
hold your peace.” We hear of no further counsels from 
Hassan. 

Ali had looked for powerful aid from Abu Musa Alashair, 
governor of Cufa, but he was of a lukewarm spirit, and 
cherished no good will to the Caliph, from his having sent 
Othman Ibn Hanef to supplant him, as has been noticed. He 
therefore received his messengers with coldness, and sent a 
reply full of evasions. Ali was enraged at this reply; and his 
anger was increased by the arrival about the same time of the 
unfortunate Othman Ibn Hanef, who had been so sadly 
scourged and maltreated and ejected from his government at 
Bassora. What most grieved the heart of the ex-governor 
was the indignity that had been offered to his person. “Oh 
Commander of the Faithful,” said he, mournfully, “when you 
sent me to Bassora I had a beard, and now, alas, I have not a 
hair on my chin!” 

Ali commiserated the unfortunate man who thus deplored 
the loss of his beard more than of his government, but com¬ 
forted him with the assurance that his sufferings would be 
counted to him as merits. He then spoke of his own case; 
the Caliphs, his predecessors, had reigned without opposition; 
but, for his own part, those who had joined in electing him, 
had proved false to him. “Telha and Zobeir,” said he, “have 
submitted to Abu Beker, Omar, and Othman; why have they 
arrayed themselves against me? By Allah, they shall find 
that I am not one jot inferior to my predecessors!” 

Ali now sent more urgent messages to Abu Musa, governor 


404 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


of Cufa, by his son Hassan and Ammar Ibn Yaser, his general 
oi the horse, a stern old soldier, ninety years of age, the same 
intrepid spokesman who, for his hardihood of tongue, had 
been severely maltreated by order of the Caliph Othman. 
They were reinforced by Alashtar, a determined officer, who 
had been employed in the previous mission, and irritated by 
the prevarications of Abu Musa. 

Hassan and Ammar were received with ceremonious respect 
6y the governor, and their mission was discussed, according 
to usage, in the mosque, but Alashtar remained with the 
guard that had escorted them. The envoys pressed their 
errand with warmth, urging the necessity of their sending 
immediate succor to the Caliph. Abu Musa, however, who 
prided himself more upon words than deeds, answered them 
by an evasive harangue; signifying his doubts of the policy of 
their proceeding; counselling that the troops should return to 
Medina, that the whole matter in dispute should be investi¬ 
gated, and the right to rule amicably adjusted. “It is a bad 
business,” added he, “ and he that meddles least with it stands 
less chance of doing wrong. For what says the prophet 
touching an evil affair of the kind? He who sleepeth in it is 
more secure than he that waketh; he that lyeth than he that 
sitteth; he that sitteth than he that standeth; he that standetli 
than he that walketh; and he that walketh than he that 
rideth. Sheathe, therefore, your swords, take the heads from 
your lances, and the strings from your bows, and receive him 
that is injured into your dwellings, until all matters are ad¬ 
justed and reconciled.” 

The ancient general, Ammar, replied to him tartly, that he 
had misapplied the words of the prophet, which were meant 
to rebuke such servants as himself, who were better sitting 
than standing, and sleeping than awake. Abu Musa would 
have answered him with another long harangue in favor of 
non-resistance, but was interrupted by the sudden entrance of 
a number of his soldiers, bearing evidence of having been 
piteously beaten. While Abu Musa had been holding forth at 
the mosque, Alashtar, the hardy officer who remained, with 
the escort, had seized upon the castle of Cufa, caused the 
garrison to be soundly scourged, and sent them to the mosque 
to cut short the negotiation. This prompt measure of Alashtar 
placed the cold-spirited conduct of Abu Musa in so ridiculous 
a light that the feelings of the populace were instantly turned 
against him. Hassan, the son of Ali, seized, upon the moment 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS ■ 


405 


to address the assembly. He maintained the innocence of his 
father in regard to the assassination of Othman. “His 
father,” he said, “had either done wrong, or had suffered 
wrong. If he had done wrong, God would punish him. If 
he had suffered wrong, God would help him. The case was 
in the hand of the Most High. Telha and Zoheir, who were 
the first to inaugurate him, were the first to turn against him. 
What had he done, as Caliph, to merit such opposition? What 
injustice had he committed? What covetous or selfish pro¬ 
pensity had he manifested? I am going back to my father,” 
added Hassan; £ ‘ those who are disposed to render him assist¬ 
ance may follow me.” 

His eloquence was powerfully effective, and the people of 
Cufa followed him to the number of nearly nine thousand. In 
the mean time the army of Ali had been reinforced from other 
quarters, and now amounted to thirty thousand men, all of 
whom had seen service. When he appeared with his force 
before Bassora, Ayesha and her confederates were dismayed, 
and began to treat of conciliation. Various messages passed 
between the hostile parties, and Telha and Zobeir, confiding in 
the honorable faith of Ali, had several interviews with him. 

When these late deadly enemies were seen walking back¬ 
ward and forward together, in sight of either army, and hold¬ 
ing long conversations, it was confidently expected that a 
peace would be effected; and such would have been the case 
had no malign influence interfered; for Ali, with his impres¬ 
sive eloquence, touched the hearts of his opponents, when he 
reproached them with their breach of faith, and warned them 
against the j udgments of heaven. ‘ ‘ Dost thou not remember, ” 
said he to Zobeir, “how Mahomet once asked thee if thou 
didst not love his dear son Ali? and when thou answered yea, 
dost thou not remember his reply: ‘Nevertheless a day wall 
come when thou wilt rise up against him, and draw down 
miseries upon him and upon all the faithful U ” 

“I remember it well,” replied Zobeir, “and had I remem¬ 
bered it before, never would I have taken up arms against 
you.” 

He returned to his camp determined not to fight against Ali, 
but was overruled by the vindictive Ayesha. Every attempt 
at pacification was defeated by that turbulent woman, and the 
armies were at length brought to battle. Ayesha took the field 
on that memorable occasion, mounted in a litter on her great 
camel Alascar, and rode up and clown among her troops, ani- 


406 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


mating them by her presence and her voice. The fighc was 
called, from that circumstance, The Battle of the Camel, and 
also the battle of Karibah, from the field on which it was 
fought. 

It was an obstinate and bloody conflict, for Moslem was ar¬ 
rayed against Moslem, and nothing is so merciless and unyield¬ 
ing as civil war. In the heat of the fight Merwan Ibn Hakem, 
who stood near Ali, noticed Telha endeavoring to goad on the 
flagging valor of his troops. ‘ ‘ Behold the traitor Telha, ” cried 
he, “but lately one of the murderers of Othman, now the pre¬ 
tended avenger of his blood.” So saying, he let fly an arrow 
and wounded him in the leg. Telha writhed with the pain, and 
at the same moment his horse reared and threw him. In the 
dismay and anguish of the moment he imprecated the ven¬ 
geance of Allah upon his own head for the death of Othman. 
Seeing his boot full of blood, he made one of his followers take 
him up behind him on his horse and convey him to Bassora. 
Finding death approaching, he called to one of Ali’s men who 
happened to be present, “ Give me your hand,” said the dying 
penitent, “that I may put mine in it, and thus renew my oath 
of fealty to Ali.” With these words he expired. His dying 
speech was reported to Ali, and touched his generous heart. 
“ Allah,” said he, “ would not call him to heaven until he had 
blotted out his first breach of his word by this last vow of 
fidelity.” 

Zobeir, the other conspirator, had entered into the battle 
with a heavy heart. His previous conversation with Ali had 
awakened compunction in his bosom. He now saw that old 
Ammar Ibn Yaser, noted for probity and rectitude, was in the 
Caliph’s host; and he recollected hearing Mahomet say that 
Ammar Ibn Yaser would always be found on the side of truth 
and justice. With a boding spirit he drew out of the battle 
and took the road toward Mecca. As he was urging his mel¬ 
ancholy way he came to a valley crossed by the brook Sabaa, 
where Hanef Ibn Kais was encamped with a horde of Arabs, 
awaiting the issue of the battle, ready to join the conqueror 
and share the spoil. Hanef knew him at a distance. “ Is there 
no one,” said he, “ to bring me tidings of Zobeir?” One of his 
men, Amru Ibn Jarmuz, understood the hint, and spurred to 
overtake Zobeir. The latter, suspecting his intentions, bade 
him keep at a distance. A short conversation put them on 
friendly terms, and they both dismounted and conversed to¬ 
gether. The hour of prayers arrived. “Salat” (to prayers!) 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


407 


cried Zobeir. “ Salat,” replied Amru; but as Zobeir prostrated 
himself in supplication, Amru struck off his head, and has¬ 
tened with it, as a welcome trophy, tc Ali. That generous 
conqueror shed tears over the bleeding head of one who was 
once his friend. Then turning to his slayer, “ Hence, miscre¬ 
ant!” cried he, “ and carry thy tidings to Ben Safiah in helli” 
So unexpected a malediction, where he expected a reward, 
threw Amru into a transport of rage and desperation; he ut¬ 
tered a rhapsody of abuse upon Ali, and then, drawing his 
sword, plunged it into his own bosom. 

Such was the end of the two leaders of the rebels. As 
to Ayesha, the implacable soul of the revolt, she had mingled 
that day in the hottest of the fight. Tabari, the Persian his¬ 
torian, with national exaggeration, declares that the heads of 
threescore and ten men were cut off that held the bridle of her 
camel, and that the inclosed litter in which she rode was bris¬ 
tled all over with darts and arrows. At last her camel was 
hamstringed, and sank with her to the ground, and she re¬ 
mained there until the battle was concluded. 

Ayesha might have looked for cruel treatment at the hands 
of Ali, having been his vindictive and persevering enemy, but 
he was too magnanimous to triumph over a fallen foe. It is 
said some reproachful words passed between them, but he 
treated her with respect, gave her an attendance of forty fe¬ 
males, and sent his sons Hassan and Hosein to escort her a 
day’s journey toward Medina, where she was confined to her 
own house, and forbidden to intermeddle any more with affairs 
of state. He then divided the spoils among the heirs of his sol¬ 
diers who were slain, and appointed Abdallah Ibn Abbas gover¬ 
nor of Bassora. This done, he repaired to Cufa, and in reward 
of the assistance he had received from its inhabitants, made 
that city the seat of his Caliphat. These occurrences took place 
in the thirty-BAli year of the Hegira, the 655th of the Chris-, 
tian-era. 


408 


MAHOMET AND I1IS SUCCESSORS. 


«APTER XXXIX. 

BATTLES BETWEEN ALI AND MO AW YAH—THEIR CLAIMS TO THE 

CALIPHAT LEFT TO ARBITRATION; THE RESULT—DECLINE OF 

THE POWER OF ALI—LOSS OF EGYPT. 

The victory at Karibali had crushed the conspiracy of 
Ayesha, and given Ah quiet dominion over Egypt, Arabia, and 
Persia; still his most formidable adversary remained unsub¬ 
dued. Moawyah Ibn Abu Sofian held sway over the wealthy 
and populous province of Syria; he had immense treasures and 
a powerful army at his command; he had the prejudices of the 
Syrians in his favor, who had been taught to implicate Ali in 
the murder of Othlnan, and refused to acknowledge him as 
Caliph. Still further to strengthen himself in defiance of the 
sovereign power, he sought the alliance of Amru, who had 
been displaced from the government of Egypt by Ali, and was 
now a discontented man in Palestine. Restoration to that 
command was to be the reward of his successful co-operation 
with Moawyah in deposing Ali; the terms were accepted; 
Amru hastened to Damascus at the head of a devoted force; 
and finding the public mind ripe for his purpose, gave the hand 
of allegiance to Moawyah in presence of the assembled army, 
and proclaimed him Caliph, amid the shouts cf the multitude. 

Ali had in vain endeavored to prevent the hostility of 
Moawyah, by all conciliatory means; when he heard of this 
portentous alliance he took the field and marched for Syria, at 
the head of ninety thousand men. The Arabians, with their 
accustomed fondness for the marvellous, signalize his entrance 
into the confines of Syria with an omen. Having halted his 
army in a place where there was no water, he summoned a 
Christian hermit, who lived in a neighboring cave, and 
demanded to be shown a well. The anchorite assured him 
that there was nothing but a cistern, in which there were 
scarce three buckets of rain water. Ali maintained that 
certain prophets of the people of Israel had abode there in 
times of old, and had digged a well there. The hermit replied 
that a well did indeed exist there, but it had been shut up for 
ages, and all traces of it lost, and it was only to be discovered 
and reopened by a predestined hand. He then, says the 
Arabian tradition, produced a parchment scroll written by 


MAIIO ME. I AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


409 


Simeon ben Safa (Simon Cephas), one of the greatest apostles 
of Jesus Christ, predicting the coming of Mahomet, the last of 
the prophets, and that this well would be discovered and 
reopened by his lawful heir and successor. 

Ali listened with becoming reverence to this prediction; 
then turning to his attendants and pointing to a spot, “Dig 
there,” said he. They digged, and after a time came to an 
immense stone, which having removed with diffculty, the 
miraculous well stood revealed, affording a seasonable supply 
to the army, and an unquestionable proof of the legitimate 
claim of Ali to the Caliphat. The venerable hermit was struck 
with conviction; he fell at the feet of Ali, embraced his knees, 
and never afterward would leave him. 

It was on the first day of the thirty-seventh year of the 
Hegira (18th June, a.d. 657), that Ali came in sight of the 
army of Moawyah, consisting of eighty thousand men, en¬ 
camped on the plain of Seffein, on the banks of the Euphrates, 
on the confines of Babylonia and Syria. Associated with 
Moawyah was the redoubtable Amru, a powerful ally both 
in council and in the field. The army of Ali was superior in 
number; in his host, too, he had several veterans who had 
fought under Mahomet in the famous battle of Beder, and 
thence prided themselves in the surname of Shahabah; that is 
to say, Companions of the Prophet. The most distinguished 
of these was old Ammar Ibn Yaser, Ali’s general of horse, who 
had fought repeatedly by the side of Mahomet. He was 
ninety years of age, yet full of spirit and activity, and idolized 
by the Moslem soldiery. 

The armies lay encamped in sight of each other, but as it 
was the first month of the Moslem year, a sacred month, when 
all warfare is prohibited, it was consumed in negotiations; for 
Ali still wished to avoid the effusion of kindred blood. His 
efforts were in vain, and in the next month hostilities com¬ 
menced; still Ali drew his sword with an unwilling hand; he 
charged his soldiers never to be the first to fight; never to 
harm those who fled, and never to do violence to a woman. 
Moawyah and Amru were likewise sensible of the unnatural 
character of this war; the respective leaders, therefore, avoided 
any general action, and months passed in mere skirmishings. 
These, however, were sharp and sanguinary, and in the course 
of four months Moawyah is said to have lost five-and-forty 
thousand men, and Ali more than half that number. 

Among the slain on the part of Ali were five-and-twenty of 


410 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the Shahabah, the veterans of Beder, and companions of the 
prophet. Their deaths were deplored even by the enemy; but 
nothing caused greater grief than the fall of the brave old 
Ammar Ibn Yaser, Ali’s general of horse, and the patriarch of 
Moslem chivalry. Moawyah and Amru beheld him fall. ‘ ‘ Do 
you see,” cried Moawyah, “what precious lives are lost in our 
dissensions?” “See,” exclaimed Amru; “would to God I had 
died twenty years since!” 

Al i forgot his usual moderation on beholding the fate of his 
brave old general of the horse, and putting himself at the head I 
of twelve thousand cavalry, made a furious charge to avenge 
his death. The ranks of the enemy were broken by the shock; 
but the heart of Ah soon relented at the sight of carnage. 
Spurring within call of Moawyah, “How long,” cried he, 

“ shall Moslem blood be shed like water in our strife ? Come 
forth, and let Allah decide between us. Whichever is victor 
in the fight, let him be.ruler.” 

Amru was struck with the generous challenge, and urged 
Moawyah to accept it; but the latter shunned an encounter 
with an enemy surnamed “The Lion,” for his prowess, and 
who had always slain his adversary in single fight. Amru 
hinted at the disgrace that would attend his refusal; to which 
Moawyah answered with a sneer, “You do wisely to provoke 
a combat that may make you governor of Syria.” 

A desperate battle at length took place, which continued 
throughout the night. Many were slain on both sides;, but 
most on the part of the Syrians. Alashtar was the hero of 
this fight; he was mounted upon a piebald horse, and wielded 
a two-edged sword; every stroke of that terrible weapon clove 
down a warrior, and every stroke was accompanied by the 
shout of Allah Achbar! He was heard to utter that porten¬ 
tous exclamation, say the Arabian historians, four hundred 
times during the darkness of the night. 

The day dawned disastrously upon the Syrians. Alashtar 
was pressing them to their very encampment, and Moawyah 
was in despair, when Amru suggested an expedient, founded on 
the religious scruples of the Moslems. On a sudden the Syrians 
elevated the Koran on the points of their lances. ‘ ‘ Behold the 
book of God,” cried they. “Let that decide our differences.” 
The soldiers of Ali instantly dropped the points of their 
weapons. It was in vain Ali represented that this was all a 
trick, and endeavored to urge them on. “What!” cried they, 
“ do you refuse to submit to the decision of the book of God ?” 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


411 


Ali found that to persist would be to shock their bigot 
prejudices, and to bring a storm upon his own head; reluc¬ 
tantly, therefore, he sounded a retreat; but it required 
repeated blasts to call off Alashtar, who came, his scimetar 
dripping with blood, and murmuring at being, as he said, 
tricked out of so glorious a victory. 

Umpires were now appointed to settle this great dispute 
according to the dictates of the Koran. Ali would have 
nominated on his part Abdallah Ibn Abbas, but he was 
objected to, as being his cousin-german. Ho then named 
the brave Alashtar, but he was likewise set aside, and Abu 
Musa pressed upon him, an upright, but simple and somewhat 
garrulous man, as has already been shown. As to Moawyah, 
he managed on his part to have Amru Ibn al Aass appointed, 
the shrewdest and most sagacious man in all Arabia. The 
two rival leaders then retired, Ali to Cufa, and Moawyah to 
Damascus, leaving generals in command of their respective 
armies. 

The arbitrators met several months afterward at Jumat al 
Joudel, in presence of both armies, who were pledged to sup¬ 
port their decision. Amru, who understood the weak points 
of Musa’s character, treated him with great deference, and 
after having won his confidence, persuaded him that, to heal 
these dissensions, and prevent the shedding of kindred blood, 
it would be expedient to set aside both candidates and let the 
faithful elect a third. This being agreed upon, a tribunal was 
. erected between the armies, and Amru, through pretended def¬ 
erence, insisted that Musa should be the first to ascend it and 
address the people. Abu Musa accordingly ascended, and pro¬ 
claimed with a loud voice, ‘‘I depose Ali and Moawyah from 
the office to which they pretend, even as I draw this ring from 
my finger.” So saying, he descended. 

Amru now mounted in his turn. ‘ ‘ You have heard, ” said he, 
“how Musa on his part has deposed Ali; I on my part depose 
him also; and I adjudge the Caliphat to Moawyah, and invest 
him with it, as I invest my finger with this ring; and I do it 
with justice, for he is the rightful successor and avenger of 
Othman.” 

Murmurs succeeded from the partisans of Ali, and from Abu 
Musa, who complained of the insincerity of Amru. The Syrians 
applauded the decision, and both parties, being prevented from 
hostilities by a solemn truce, separated without any personal 
violence, but with mutual revilings and augmented enmity. A 


412 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


kind of religious feud sprang up, which continued for a long 
time between the house of Ali and that of Ommiah; they never 
mentioned each other without a curse, and pronounced an ex- 
communication upon each oth^r whenever they harangued the 
people in the mosque. 

The power of Ali now began to wane; the decision pronounced 
against him influenced many of his own party, and a revolt 
was at length stirred up among his followers, by a set of fanatic 
zealots called Karigites or seceders, who insisted that he had 
done wrong in referring to the judgment of men what ought to 
be decided by God alone; and that he had refused to break the 
truce and massacre his enemies when in his power, though they 
had proved themselves to be the enemies of God; they there¬ 
fore renounced allegiance to him; appointed Abdallah Ibn 
Waheb as their leader, and set up their standard at Nahar- 
wan, a few miles from Bagdad, whither the disaffected re¬ 
paired from all quarters, until they amounted to twenty-five 
thousand. 

The appearance of Ali with an army brought many of them 
to their senses. Willing to use gentle measures, he caused a 
standard to be erected outside of his camp, and proclaimed a 
pardon to such of the malcontents as should rally round it. 
The rebel army immediately began to melt away until Abdal¬ 
lah Ibn Waheb was left with only four thousand adherents. 
These, however, were fierce enthusiasts, and their leader was a 
fanatic. Trusting that Allah and the prophet would render 
him miraculous assistance, he attacked the army of Ali with 
his handful of men, who fought with such desperation that 
nine only escaped. These served as firebrands to enkindle 
future mischief. 

Moawyah had now recourse to a stratagem to sow troubles in 
Egypt, and ultimately to put it in the hands of Amru. Ali, on 
assuming the Caliphat, had appointed Saad Ibn Kais to the gov¬ 
ernment of thai province, who administered its affairs with 
ability. Moawyali now forged a letter from Saad to himself, 
professing devotion to his interests, and took measures to let it 
fall into the hands of Ali. The plan was successful. The sus¬ 
picions of Ali were excited; he recall J Saad and appointed in 
his place Mahomet, son of Abu Beker, and brother of Ayesha. 
Mahomet began to govern with a high hand, proscribing and 
exiling the leaders of the Otliman faction, who made the mur¬ 
der of the late Caliph a question of party. This immediately 
produced commotions and insurrections, and all Egypt was 


MAHOMET AND HIT SUCCESSORS. 


413 


getting into a blaze. Ali again sought to remedy the evil by 
changing the governor, and dispatched Malec Shutur, a man of 
prudence and ability, to take the command. In the course of 
his journey Malec lodged one night at the house of a peasant, 
cn the confines of Arabia and Egypt. The peasant was a crea¬ 
ture of Moawyah’s, and poisoned his unsuspecting guest with a 
pot of honey. Moawyah followed up this treacherous act by 
sending Amru with six thousand horse to seize upon Egypt in 
its present stormy state. Amru hastened with joy to the scene 
of his former victories, made his way rapidly to Alexandria, 
united his force with that of Ibn Sharig, the leader of the Ofch- 
man party, and they together routed Mahomet Ibn Abu Beker, 
and took him prisoner. The avengers of Othman reviled Ma' 
hornet with his assassination of that Caliph, put him to death, 
enclosed his body in the carcass of an ass, and burnt both to 
ashes. Then Amru assumed the govermnent of Egypt as lieu¬ 
tenant of Moawyah. 

When Ayesha heard of the death of her brother, she knelt 
down in the mosque, and in the agony of her heart invoked a 
curse upon Moawyah and Amru, an invocation which she 
thenceforth repeated at the end of all her prayers. Ali, also, 
was afflicted at the death of Mahomet, and exclaimed, ‘ ‘ The 
murderers will answer for this before God.” 


CHAPTER XL 

PREPARATIONS OF ALI FOR THE INVASION OF SYRIA—HIS 
ASSASSINATION. 

The loss of Egypt was a were blow to the fortunes of Ali, 
and be had the mortification subsequently to behold his active 
rival make himself master of Hejaz, plant his standard on the 
sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, and ravage the fertile 
province of Yemen. The decline of his power affected his 
spirits, and he sank at times into despondency. His melan¬ 
choly was aggravated by the conduct of his own brobl iv Okail, 
who, under pretence tha,t Ali did not maintain him in suitable 
style, deserted him in his sinking fortunes, and went over to 
Moawyah, vTio rewarded his unnatural desertion with ample 
revenues. 

Still Ali meditated one more grand effort. Sixty thousand 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


414 

devoted adherents pledged themselves to stand by him to the 
death, and with these he prepared to march into Syria. While 
preparations were going on, it chanced that three zealots, of 
the sect of Karigites, met as pilgrims in the mosque of Mecca, 
and fell into conversation about the battle of Naharwan, where¬ 
in four thousand of their brethren had lost their lives. This 
led to lamentations over the dissensions and dismemberment of 
the Moslem empire, all which they attributed to the ambition 
of Ali, Moawyah, and Amru. The Karigites were a fanatic 
sect, and these men were zealots of that dangerous kind who 
are ready to sacrifice their lives in the accomplishment of any 
bigot plan. In their infuriate zeal they determined that the 
only way to restore peace and unity to Islam would be to 
destroy those three ambitious leaders, and they devoted them¬ 
selves to the task, each undertaking to dispatch his victim. 
The several assassinations were to be effected at the same 
time, on Friday, the seventeenth of the month Ramadan, at 
the hour of prayer; and that their blows might be infallibly 
mortal, they were to use poisoned weapons. 

The names of the conspirators were Barak Ibn Abdallah, 
Amru Ibn Asi, and Abda’lrahman Ibn Melgem. Barak re¬ 
paired to Damascus and mingled in the retinue of Moawyah on 
the day appointed, which was the Moslem sabbath; then, as 
the usurper was officiating in the mosque as pontiff, Barak 
gave him what he considered a fatal blow. The wound was 
desperate, but the life of Moawyah was saved by desperate 
remedies; the assassin was mutilated of hands and feet and 
suffered to live, but was slain in after years by a friend of 
Moawyah. 

Amru Ibn Asi, the second of these fanatics, entered the 
mosque in Egypt on the same day and hour, and, with one 
blow killed Karijah, the Imam, who officiated, imagining him 
to be Amru Ibn al Aass, who was prevented from attending the 
mosque through illness. The assassin being led before his in- 
j.tended victim, and informed of his error, replied with the resig¬ 
nation of a predestinarian, “I intended Amru; but Allah in¬ 
tended Karijah.” He was presently executed. 

• Abda’lrahman, the third assassin, repaired to Cufa, where 
Ah held his court. Here he lodged with a woman of the sect 
of the Karigites, whose husband had been killed in the battle 
of Naharwan. To this woman he made proposals of marriage, 
but she replied she would have no man who coiild not bring 
her, as a dowry, three thousand drachms of silver, a slave, a 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


415 


maid-servant, and the head of Aii. He accepted the conditions, 
and joined two other Karigites, called Derwan and Shabib', 
with him in the enterprise. They stationed themselves in the 
mosque to await the coming of the Caliph. 

Ali had recently been afflicted with one of his fits of despon¬ 
dency, and had uttered ejaculations which were afterward 
considered presages of his impending fate. In one of his mel¬ 
ancholy moods he exclaimed, with a heavy sigh, “Alas, my 
heart! there is need of patience, for there is no remedy against 
death!” In parting from his house to go to the mosque, there 
was a clamor among his domestic fowls, which he interpreted 
into a fatal omen. As he entered the mosque the assassins 
drew their swords and pretended to be fighting among them¬ 
selves ; Derwan aimed a blow at the Caliph, but it fell short, 
and struck the gate of the mosque; a blow from Abda’lrahman 
was better aimed, and wounded Ali in the head. The assassins 
then separated and fled. Derwan was pursued and slain at the 
threshold of his home; Shabib distanced his pursuers and 
escaped. AbdaTrahman, after some search, was discovered 
hidden in a corner of the mosque, his sword still in his hand. 
He was dragged forth and brought before the Caliph. The 
wound of Ali was pronounced mortal; he consigned his mur¬ 
derer to the custody of his son Hassan, adding, with his accus¬ 
tomed clemency “ Let him want for nothing; and, if I die of 
my wound, let him not be tortured; let his death be by a single 
blow.” His orders, according to the Persian writers, were 
strictly complied with, but the Arabians declare that he was 
killed by piecemeal; and the Moslems opposed to the sect of 
Ali hold him up as a martyr. 

The death of Ali happened within three days after receiving 
his wound: it was in the fortieth year of the Hegira, a.d. 660. 
He was about sixty-three years of age, of which he had reigned 
not quite five. His remains were interred about five miles 
from Cufa; and, in after times, a magnificent tomb, covered 
by a mosque, with a splendid dome, rose over his grave, and it 
became the site of a city called Meshed Ali, or, the Sepulchre 
of Ali, and was enriched and beautified by many Persian mon- 
archs. 

We make no concluding comments on the noble and gener¬ 
ous character of Ali, which km IbseB fr^iioiently illustrated 
throughout all the recorded] or. his life. He was 

one of the last and worthiest c2 the primitive Moslems, who 
imbibed his religious enthusiasm from companionship with the 


416 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


prophet himself; and who followed, to the last, the simplicity 
of his example. Pie is honorably spoken of as the first Caliph 
who accorded some protection to Belles-Lettres. He indulged 
in the poetic vein himself, and many of his maxims and prov¬ 
erbs are preserved, and have been translated into various lan¬ 
guages. His signet bore this inscription: “ Th® kingdom be< 
longs to God.” One of his sayings shows the little value he set 
upon the transitory glories of this world. “Life is but the 
shadow of a cloud; the dream of a sleeper.” 

By his first wife, Fatima, the daughter of Mahome, the had 
three sons, Mohassan, who died young, and Hassan and Hosein, 
who survived him. After her death he had eight other wives, 
and his issue, in all, amounted to fifteen sons and eighteen 
daughters. His descendants, by Fatima, are distinguished 
among Moslems as descendants of the prophet, and are very 
numerous, being reckoned both by the male and female fine. 
They wear turbans of a peculiar fashion, and twist their hair 
in a different manner from other Moslems. They are consid¬ 
ered of noble blood, and designated in different countries by 
various titles, such as Sheriffs, Fatimites, and Emirs. The 
Persians venerate Ali as next to the prophet, and solemnize 
the anniversary of his martyrdom. The Turks hold him in 
abhorrence, and for a long time, in their prayers, accompanied 
his name with execrations, but subsequently abated in their 
violence. It is said that Ali was born in the Caaba, or holy 
temple of Mecca, where his mother was suddenly taken in 
labor, and that he was the only person of such distinguished 
birth. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

/ 

SUCCESSION OF HASSAN, FIFTH CALIPH—HE ABDICATES IN FAVOR 
OF MOAWYAH. 

In his dying moments, Ali had refused to nominate a suc¬ 
cessor, but his eldest son Hassan, then in his 37th year, was 
elected without opposition. He stood high in the favor of the 
people, partly from his having been a favorite with his grand¬ 
father, the prophet, to whom in his features he bore a strong 
resemblance; but chiefly from the moral excellence of his 
character, for he was upright, sincere, benevolent, and devout. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


417 


He lacked, however, the energy and courage necessary to a 
sovereignty, where the sceptre was a sword; and he was un¬ 
fitted to command in the civil wars which distracted the em¬ 
pire, for he had a horror of shedding Moslem blood. He made 
a funeral speech over his father’s remains, showing that his 
death was coincident with great and solemn events. “He was 
slain,” said he, “on the same night of the year in which the 
Koran was transmitted to earth; in which Isa (Jesus) was 
taken up to heaven, and in which Joshua, the son of Nun, was 
killed. By Allah! none of his predecessors surpassed him, nor 
will he ever be equalled by a successor.” 

Then Kais, a trusty friend of the house of Ali, commenced 
the, inauguration of the new Caliph. ‘ ‘ Stretch forth thy hand, ” 
said he to Hassan, “in pledge that thou wilt stani by the hook 
of God, and the tradition of the apostle, and make war against 
all opposers.” Hassan complied with the ceremonial, and was 
proclaimed Caliph, and the people were called upon to acknowl¬ 
edge allegiance to him, and engage to maintain peace with his 
friends, and war with his enemies. Some of the people, how¬ 
ever, with the characteristic fickleness of Babylonians, mur¬ 
mured at the suggestion of further warfare, and said, we want 
no fighting Caliph. 

Had Hassan consulted his own inclination, he would willing- 
ingly have clung to peace, and submitted to the usurpations of 
Moawyah; but he was surrounded by valiant generals eager 
for action, and stimulated by his brother Hosein, who inher¬ 
ited the daring character of their father; besides, there were 
sixty thousand fighting men, all ready for the field, and who 
had been on the point of marching into Syria under Ali. Un¬ 
willingly, therefore, he put himself at the head of this force 
and commenced his march. Receiving intelligence that Moa¬ 
wyah had already taken the field and was advancing to meet 
him, he sent Kais in the advance, with 12,000 light troops, to 
hold the enemy in check, while he followed with the main 
army. Kais executed his commission with spirit, had a smart 
skirmish with the Syrians, and having checked them in their 
advance, halted and put himself in a position to await the 
coming of the Caliph. 

Hassan, however, had already become sensible of his incom- 
petency to military command. There was disaffection among 
some of his troops, who were people of Irak or Babylonia, dis¬ 
inclined to this war. On reaching the city of Madayn, an affray 
took place among the soldiers in which one was slain; a fierce 


418 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


tumult succeeded; Hassan attempted to interfere, but was 
jostled and wounded in the throng, and obliged to retire into 
the citadel. He had taken refuge from violence, and was ki 
danger of treason, for the nephew of the governor of Madayn 
proposed to his uncle, now that he had Hassan within his 
castle, to make him his prisoner, and send him in chains to 
Moawyah. “ A curse upon thee for a traitor and an infidel!” 
cried the honest old governor; “ wouldst.thou betray the son 
of the daughter of the Apostle of God?” 

The mild-tempered Caliph, who had no ambition of command, 
was already disheartened by its troubles. He saw that he had 
an active and powerful enemy to contend with, and fickleness 
and treachery among his own people; he sent proposals to 
Moawyah, offering to resign the Caliphat to him, on condition 
that he should be allowed to retain the money in the public 
treasury at Cufa, and the revenues of a great estate in Persia, 
and that Moawyah would desist from all evil speaking against 
his deceased father. Moawyah assented to the two former of 
these stipulations, but would only consent to refrain from 
speaking evil of Ali in presence of Hassan; and indeed such 
was the sectarian hatred already engendered against Ali, 
that, under the sway of Moawyah, his name was never men¬ 
tioned in the mosques without a curse, and such continued to 
be the case for several generations under the dominion of the 
house of Ommiah. 

Another condition exacted by Hassan, and which ultimately 
proved fatal to him, was that he should be entitled to resume 
the Caliphat on the death of Moawyah, who was above a score 
of years his senior. These terms being satisfactorily adjusted, 
Hassan abdicated in favor of Moawyah, to the great indigna¬ 
tion of his brother Hosein, who considered the memory of their 
father Ali dishonored by this arrangement. The people of 
Cufa refused to comply with that condition relative to the 
public treasury, insisting upon it that it was their property. 
Moawyah, however, allowed Hassan an immense revenue, 
with which he retired with his brother to Medina, to enjoy that 
ease and tranquillity which he so much prized. His life was 
exemplary and devout, and the greater part of his revenue 
was expended in acts of charity. 

Moawyah seems to have been well aware of the power of 
gold in making the most distasteful things palatable. An old 
beldame of the lineage of Hasehem, and branch of Ali, once re¬ 
proached him with having supplanted that family, who were 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


419 


his cousins, and with having acted toward them as Pharaoh 
did toward the children of Israel. Moawyah gently replied, 
“May Allah pardon what is past,” and inquired what were her 
wants. She said two thousand pieces of gold for her poor re¬ 
lations, two thousand as a dower for her children, and two 
thousand as a support for herself. The money was given in¬ 
stantly, and the tongue of the clamorous virago was silenced. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

REIGN OF MOAWYAH I., SIXTH CALIPH—ACCOUNT OF HIS ILLE¬ 
GITIMATE BROTHER ZEYAD—DEATH OF AMRU. 

Moawyah now, in the forty-first year of the Hegira, assumed 
legitimate dominion over the whole Moslem empire. The Kari- 
gites, it is true, a fanatic sect opposed to all regular govern¬ 
ment, spiritual or temporal, excited an insurrection in Syria, but 
Moawyah treated them with more thorough rigor than his pre¬ 
decessors, and finding the Syrians not sufficient to cope with 
them, called in his new subjects, the Babylonians, to show 
their allegiance by rooting out this pestilent sect; nor did he 
stay his hand until they were almost exterminated. 

With this Caliph commenced the famous dynasty of the 
Ommiades or Omeyades, so called from Ommiah his great¬ 
grandfather; a dynasty which lasted for many generations, 
and gave some of the most brilliant names to Arabian history. 
Moawyah himself gave indications of intellectual refinement. 
He surrounded himself with men distinguished in science or 
gifted with poetic talent, and from the Greek provinces and 
islands which he had subdued, the Greek sciences began to 
make their way, and under his protection to exert their first 
influence on the Arabs. 

One of the measures adopted by Moawyah to strengthen 
himself in the Caliphat excited great sensation, and merits 
particular detail. At the time of the celebrated flight of Ma¬ 
homet, Abu Sofian, father of Moawyah, at that time chief of 
the tribe of Koreish, and as yet an inveterate persecutor of the 
prophet, halted one day for refreshment at the house of a pub¬ 
lican in Tayef. Here he became intoxicated with wine, and 
passed the night in the arms of the wife of a Greek slave, 



420 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


named Somyah, who in process of time made him the father 
of a male child. Abu Sofian, ashamed of this amour, would 
not acknowledge the child, but left him to his fate; hence he 
received the name of Ziyad Ibn Abihi, that it is to say, Ziyad 
the son of nobody. 

The boy, thus deserted, gave early proof of energy and 
talent. When scarce arrived at manhood, he surprised Amru 
Ibn al Aass by his eloquence and spirit in addressing a popular 
assembly. Amru, himself illegitimate, felt a sympathy in the 
vigor of this spurious offset. “ By the prophet!” exclaimed he, 
“if this youth were but of the noble race of Koreish, he would 
drive all the tribes of Arabia before him with his staff!” 

Ziyad was appointed cadi or judge, in the reign of Omar, 
and was distinguished by his decisions. On one occasion, cer¬ 
tain witnesses came before him accusing Mogeirah Ibn Seid, a 
distinguished person of unblemished character, with inconti¬ 
nence, but failed to establish the charge; whereupon Ziyad dis¬ 
missed the accused with honor, and caused his accusers to be 
scourged with rods for bearing false witness. This act was 
never forgotten J)y Mogeirah, who, becoming afterward one of 
the counsellors of the Caliph Ah, induced him to appoint 
Ziyad lieutenant or governor of Persia, an arduous post of 
high trust, the duties of which he discharged with great 
ability. 

After the death of Ali and the abdication of Hassan, events 
which followed hard upon each other, Ziyad, who still held 
sway over Persia, hesitated to acknowledge Moawyah as 
Caliph. The latter was alarmed at this show of opposition, 
fearing lest Ziyad should join with the family of Haschem, 
the kindred of the prophet, who desired the elevation of 
Hosein; he, therefore, sent for Mogeirah, the former patron 
of Ziyad, and prevailed upon him to mediate between them. 
Mogeirah repaired to Ziyad in person, bearing a letter of kind¬ 
ness and invitation from the Caliph, and prevailed on him to 
accompany him to Cufa. On their arrival Moawyah embraced 
Ziyad, and received him with public demonstrations of respect 
and affection, as his brother by the father’s side. The fact of 
their consanguinity was established on the following day, in 
full assembly, by the publican of Tayef, who bore testimony 
to the intercourse between Abu Sofian and the beautiful slave. 

This decision, enforced by the high hand of authority, ele¬ 
vated Ziyad to the noblest blood of Koreish, and made him 
eligible to the highest offices, though in fact the strict letter 


MAHOMET AND Ills SUCCESSORS. 


421 

of the Mahometan law would have pronounced him the son of 
the Greek slave, who was husband of his mother. 

The family of the Ommiades were indignant at having the 
base-born offspring of a slave thus introduced among them; 
but Moawyah disregarded these murmurs; he had probably 
gratified his own feelings of natural affection, and he had 
firmly attached to his interest a man of extensive influence, 
and one of the ablest generals of the age. 

Moawyah found good service in his valiant though misbe¬ 
gotten brother. Under the sway of incompetent governors 
the country round Bassora had become overrun with thieves 
and murderers, and disturbed by all kinds of tumults. Ziyad 
was put in the command, and hastened to take possession of 
his turbulent post. He found Bassora a complete den of assas¬ 
sins ; not a night but was disgraced by riot and bloodshed, so 
that it was unsafe to walk the streets after dark. Ziyad was 
an eloquent man, and he made a public speech terribly to the 
point. He gave notice that he meant to rule with the sword, 
and to wreak unsparing punishment on all offenders; he ad¬ 
vised all such, therefore, to leave the city. He warned all 
persons from appearing in public after evening prayers, as a 
patrol would go the rounds and put every one to death who 
should be found in the streets. He carried this measure into 
effect. Two hundred persons were put to death by the patrol 
during the first night, only five during the second, and not a 
drop of blood was shed afterward, nor was there any further 
tumult or disturbance. 

Moawyah then employed him to effect the same reforms in 
Khorassan and many other provinces, and the more he had to 
execute, the more was his ability evinced, until his mere name 
would quell commotion, and awe the most turbulent into 
quietude. Yet he was not sanguinary nor cruel, but severely 
rigid in his discipline, and inflexible in the dispensation oj 
justice. It was his custom, wherever he held sway, to ordet 
the inhabitants to leave their doors open at night, with merely 
a hurdle at the entrance to exclude cattle, engaging to replace 
anything that should be stolen; and so effective was his police 
that no robberies were committed. 

Though Ziyad had whole provinces under his government, 
he felt himself not sufficiently employed; he wrote to the 
Caliph, therefore, complaining that, while his left hand was 
occupied in governing Babylonia, his right hand was idle; and 
he requested the government of Arabia Petrea also, which tho 


422 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Caliph gladly granted him, 10 the great terror of its inhabi* 
tants, who dreaded so stern a ruler. But the sand of Ziyad 
was exhausted. He was attacked with the plague when on the 
point of setting out for Arabia. The disease made its appear¬ 
ance with an ulcer in his hand, and the agony made him de¬ 
liberate whether to smite it off. As it was a case of conscience 
among predestinarians, he consulted a venerable cadi. “Ih 
you die,” said the old expounder of the law, “you go before 
God without that hand, which you have cut off to avoid ap¬ 
pearing in his presence. If you live, you give a by-name to 
your children, who will be called the sons of the cripple. I 
advise you, therefore, to let it alone.” The intensity of the 
pain, however, made him determine on amputation, but the 
sight of the fire and cauterizing irons again deterred him. He 
was surrounded by the most expert physicians, but, say the 
Arabians, “It was not in their power to reverse the sealed de¬ 
cree.” He died in the forty-fifth year of the Hegira and of 
bis own age, and the people he had governed with so much 
severity considered his death a deliverance. His son Obei- 
dallali, though only twenty-five years of age, was immediately 
invested by the Caliph with the government of Khorassan, and 
gave instant proofs of inheriting the spirit of his father. On 
his way to his government he surprised a large Turkish force, 
and put them to such sudden flight that their queen left one of 
her buskins behind, which fell into the hands of her pursuers, 
and was estimated, from the richness of its jewels, at two 
thousand pieces of gold. 

Ziyad left another son named Salem, who was, several years 
afterward, when but twenty-four years of age, appointed to the 
government of Khorassan, and rendered himself so beloved by 
the people that upward of twenty thousand children were 
named after him. He had a third son called Kameil, who was 
distinguished for sagacity and ready wit, and he furthermore 
left from his progeny a dynasty of princes in Arabia Felix, 
who ruled under the denomination of the children of Ziyad, 

The wise measures of Moawyah produced a calm through¬ 
out his empire, although his throne seemed to be elevated on 
the surface of a volcano. He had reinstated the famous 
Amru Ibn al Aass in the government of Egypt, allowing him 
to en joy the revenues of that opulent province, in gratitude 
for his having proclaimed him Caliph during his contest with 
Ah; but stipulating that he should maintain the forces 
stationed there. The veteran general did not long enjoy this 


MAHOMET AND HIT, SUCCESSORS. 


423 


post, as he died in the forty-third year of the Hegira, a.d. 663, 
as full of honors as of years. In him the cause of Islam lost one 
of its wisest men and most illustrious conquerors. “Show me,” 
said Omar to him on one occasion, “the sword with which you 
have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels.” The 
Caliph expressed surprise when he unsheathed an ordinary 
scimetar. “Alas!” said Amru, “the sword without the arm 
of the master is no sharper nor heavier than the sword of 
Farezdak the poet.” 

Mahomet, whose death preceded that of Amru upward of 
thirty years, declared, that there was no truer Moslem than he 
would prove to be, nor one more steadfast in the faith. Al¬ 
though Amru passed most of his life in the exercise of arms, 
he found time to cultivate the softer arts which belong to 
peace. We have already shown that he was an orator and a 
poet. The witty lampoons, however, which he wrote against 
the prophet in his youth, he deeply regretted in his declining 
age. He sought the company of men of learning and science, 
and delighted in the conversation of philosophers. He has left 
some proverbs distinguished for pithy wisdom, and some 
beautiful poetry, and his dying advice to his children was cele¬ 
brated for manly sense and affecting pathos. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE—TRUCE WITH THE EMPEROR—MURDER 
OF HASSAN—DEATH OF AYESHA. 

The Caliph Moawyah being thoroughly established in his 
sovereignty, was ambitious of foreign conquests, which might 
shed lustre on his name, and obliterate the memory of theso 
civil wars. He was desirous, also, of placing his son Yezid in a 
conspicuous light, and gaining for him the affections of the 
people; for he secretly entertained hopes of making him his 
successor. He determined, therefore, to send him with a great 
force to attempt the conquest of Constantinople, at that tirno 
the capital of the Greek and Roman empire. This indeed was a 
kind of holy war; for it was fulfilling one of the most ardent 
wishes of Mahomet, who had looked forward to the conquest of 
the proud capital of the Caesars as one of the highest triumphs 



424 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


of Islam, and had promised full pardon of all their sins to the 
Moslem army that should achieve it. 

The general command of the army in this expedition was 
given to a veteran named Sophian, and he was accompanied 
by several of those old soldiers of the faith, battered in the 
wars, and almost broken down by years, who had fought by 
the side of the prophet at Beder and Ohod, and were, there¬ 
fore, honored by the title of “Companions,” and who now 
showed among the ashes of age the sparks of youthful fire, as 
they girded on their swords for this sacred enterprise. 

Hosein, the valiant son of Ali, also accompanied this expe¬ 
dition; in which, in fact, the flower of Moslem chivalry 
engaged. Great preparations were made by sea and land, and 
sanguine hopes entertained of success; the Moslem troops were 
numerous and hardy, inured to toil and practised in warfare, 
and they were animated by the certainty of paradise, should 
they be victorious. The Greeks, on the other hand, were in a 
state of military decline, and their emperor, Constantine, a 
grandson of Heraclius, disgraced his illustrious name by in¬ 
dolence and incapacity. 

It is singular and to be lamented, that of this momentous 
expedition we have very few particulars, notwithstanding that 
it lasted long, and must have been checkered by striking vicissi¬ 
tudes. The Moslem fleet passed without impediment through 
the Dardanelles, and the army disembarked within seven 
miles of Constantinople. For many days they pressed the 
siege with vigor, but the city was strongly garrisoned by 
fugitive troops from various quarters, who had profited by sad 
experience in the defence of fortified towns; the walls were 
strong and high; and the besieged made use of Greek fire, to 
the Moslems a new and terrific agent of destruction. 

Finding all their efforts in vain, the Moslems consoled them¬ 
selves by ravaging the neighboring coasts of Europe and Asia, 
and on the approach of winter retired to the island of Cyzicus, 
about eighty miles from Constantinople, where they had estab¬ 
lished their headquarters. 

Six years were passed in this unavailing enterprise; im 
mense sums were expended; thousands of lives were lost by 
disease; ships and crews, by shipwreck and other disasters, 
and thousands of Moslems were slain, gallantly fighting for 
paradise under the walls of Constantinople. The most re¬ 
nowned of these was the venerable Abu Ayub, in whose house 
Mahomet had established his quarters when he first fled to Me* 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


425 


dina, and who had fought by the side of the prophet at B§der and 
Ohod. He won an honored grave; for though it remained for 
ages unknown, yet nearly eight centuries after this event, 
when Constantinople was conquered by Mahomet II., the spot 
was revealed in a miraculous vision, and consecrated by a 
mausoleum and mosque, which exist to this day, and to which 
the grand seigniors of the Ottoman empire repair to be belted 
with the scimetar on their accession to the throne. 

The protracted war with the Greeks revived their military 
ardor, and they assailed the Moslems in their turn. Moawyah 
found the war which he had provoked threatening his own 
security. Other enemies were pressing on him; age, also, had 
sapped his bodily and mental vigor, and he became so anxious 
for safety and repose that he in a manner purchased a truce of 
the emperor for thirty years, by agreeing to pay an annual 
tribute of three thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty 
horses of the noblest Arabian blood. 

Yezid, the eldest son of Moawyah, and his secretly-intended 
successor, had failed to establish a renown in this enterprise, 
and if Arabian historians speak true, his ambition led him to 
a perfidious act sufficient to stamp his name with infamy. He 
is accused of instigating the murder of the virtuous Hassan, 
the son of Ali, who had abdicated in favor of Moawyah, but 
who was to resume the Caliphat on the death of that potentate. 
It is questionable whether Hassan would ever have claimed 
this right, for he was of quiet, retired habits, and preferred the 
security and repose of a private station. He was strong, how¬ 
ever, in the affection of the people, and to remove out of the 
way so dangerous a rival, Yezid, it is said, prevailed upon one 
of his wives to poison him, promising to marry her in reward 
of her treason. The murder took place in the forty-ninth year 
of the Hegira, a.d. 669, when Hassan was forty-seven years of 
age. In his last agonies, his brother Hosein inquired at whose 
instigation he supposed himself to have been poisoned, that he 
might avenge his death, but Hassan refused to name him. 
“This world,” said he, “is only a long night; leave him alone 
until he and I shall meet in open daylight, in the presence of 
the Most High.” 

Yezid refused to fulfil his promise of taking the murderess to 
wife, alleging that it would be madness to intrust himself to 
the embraces of such a female; he, however, commuted the 
engagement for a large amount in money and jewels. Moa¬ 
wyah is accused of either countenancing or being pleased with a 


426 


MAHOMET AND MIS SUCCESSORS. 


murder ♦which made his son more eligible to the succession, for 
it is said that when he heard of the death of Hassan, ‘ * he fell 
down and worshipped.” 

Hassan had been somewhat uxorious; or rather, he had 
numerous wives, and was prone to change them when attracted 
by new beauties. One of them was the daughter of Yezdegird, 
the last king of the Persians, and she bore him several children. 
He had, altogether, fifteen sons and five daughters, and con¬ 
tributed greatly to increase the race of Sheriffs, or Fatimites, 
descendants from the prophet. In his testament he left direc¬ 
tions that he should be buried by the sepulchre of his grandsire 
Mahomet; but Ayesha, whose hatred for the family of Ah went 
beyond the grave, declared that the mansion was hers, and re¬ 
fused her consent; he was, therefore, interred in the common 
burial-ground of the city. 

Ayesha, herself, died some time afterward, in the fifty-eighth 
year of the Hegira, having survived the prophet forty-seven 
years. She was often called the Prophetess, and generally de¬ 
nominated the Mother of the Faithful, although she had never 
borne any issue to Mahomet, and had employed her widowhood 
in intrigues to prevent Ali and his children, who were the only 
progeny of the prophet, from sitting on the throne of the 
Caliphs. All the other wives of Mahomet who survived him 
passed the remainder of their lives in widowhood; but none, 
save her, seem to have been held in especial reverence. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

MOSLEM CONQUESTS IN NORTHERN AFRICA—ACHIEVEMENTS OF 
ACBAH; HIS DEATH. 

The conquest of Northern Africa, so auspiciously commenced 
by Abdallah Ibn Saad, had been suspended for a number of 
years by the pressure of other concerns, and particularly by 
the siege of Constantinople, which engrossed a great part of 
the Moslem forces; in the mean time Cyrene had shaken off 
the yoke, all Cyrenaica was in a state of insurrection, and 
there was danger that the places which had been taken and 
the posts which had been established by the Arab conquerors 
would be completely lost. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


427 


The Caliph Moawyah now looked round for some active and 
able general, competent to secure and extend his sway along 
the African sea-coast. Such a one he found in Acbah Ibn Nafe 
el Fehri, whom he dispatched from Damascus with ten thou¬ 
sand horse. Acbah made his way with all speed into Africa, 
his forces augmenting as he proceeded, by the accession of 
barbarian troops. He passed triumphantly through Cyrenaica; 
laid close siege to the city of Cyrene, and retook it, notwith¬ 
standing its strong walls and great population; but in the 
course of the siege many of its ancient and magnificent edifices 
were destroyed. 

Acbah continued his victorious course westward, traversing 
wildernesses sometimes barren and desolate, sometimes en¬ 
tangled with forests, and infested by serpents and savage 
animals, until he reached the domains of ancient Carthage, the 
present territory of Tunis. Here he determined to found a city 
to serve as a stronghold, and a place of refuge in the heart of 
these conquered regions. The site chosen was a valley closely 
wooded, and abounding with lions, tigers, and serpents. The 
Arabs give a marvellous account of the founding of the city. 
Acbah, say they, went forth into the forest, and adjured its 
savage inhabitants. ‘ ‘ Hence! avaunt! wild beasts and ser¬ 
pents ! Hence, quit this wood and valley!” This solemn ad¬ 
juration he repeated three several times, on three several days, 
and not a lion, tiger, leopard, nor serpent, but departed from 
the place. 

Others, less poetic, record that he cleared away a forest 
which had been a lurking place not merely for wild beasts and 
serpents, but for rebels and barbarous hordes; that he used the 
wood* in constructing walls for his new city, and when these 
were completed, planted his lance in the centre, and exclaimed 
to his followers, “This is your caravan.” Such was the origin 
of the city of Kairwan or Caerwan, situated thirty-three 
leagues southeast of Carthage, and twelve from the sea on the 
borders of the great desert. Here Acbah fixed his seat of gov¬ 
ernment, erecting mosques and other public edifices, and hold¬ 
ing all the surrounding country in subjection. 

While Acbah was thus honorably occupied, the Caliph 
Moawyah, little aware of the immense countries embraced in 
these recent conquests, united them with Egypt under one 
command, as if they had been two small provinces, and ap¬ 
pointed Muhegir Ibn Omm Dinar, one of the Ansari, as emir 
or governor. Muhegir was an ambitious, or rather an envious 


428 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


and perfidious man. Scarce had he entered upon his govern¬ 
ment when he began to sicken with envy of the brilliant fame 
of Acbah and his vast popularity, not merely with the army, 
hut throughout the country; he accordingly made such un¬ 
favorable reports of the character and conduct of that general, 
in his letters to the Caliph, that the latter was induced to dis¬ 
place him from the command of the African army, and recall 
him to Damascus. 

The letter of recall being sent under cover to Muhegir, he 
transmitted it by Muslama Ibn Machlad, one of his generals, 
to Acbah, charging his envoy to proceed with great caution, 
and to treat Acbah with profound deference, lest the troops, 
out of their love for him, should resist the order for his depo¬ 
sition. Muslama found Acbah in his camp at Cyrene, and 
presented him the Caliph’s letter of recall, and a letter from 
Muhegir as governor of the province, letting him know that 
Muslama and the other generals were authorized to arrest him 
should he hesitate to obey the command of the Caliph. 

There was no hesitation on the part of Acbah. He at once 
discerned whence the blow proceeded. “Oh God!” exclaimed 
he, “spare my life until I can vindicate myself from the slan¬ 
ders of Muhegir Ibn Omni Dinar.” He then departed instantly, 
without even entering his house; made his way with all speed 
to Damascus, and appeared before Moawyah in the presence of 
his generals and the officers of his court. Addressing the Caliph 
with noble indignation, “I have traversed deserts,” said he, 
“ and encountered savage tribes; I have conquered towns and 
regions, and have brought their infidel inhabitants to the know¬ 
ledge of God and his law. I have built mosques and palaces, 
and fortified our dominion over the land, and in reward I have 
been degraded from my post, and summoned hither as a cul¬ 
prit. I appeal to your justice, whether I have merited such 
treatment?” 

Moawyah felt rebuked by the magnanimous bearing of his 
general, for he was aware that he had been precipitate in con¬ 
demning him on false accusations. “ I am already informed,” 
said he, “of the true nature of the case. I now know who is 
Muhegir, and who is Acbah; return to the command of the 
army, and pursue your glorious career of conquest.” 

Although it was not until the succeeding Caliphat that Acbah 
resumed the command in Africa, we will anticipate dates in 
order to maintain unbroken the thread of his story. In pass¬ 
ing through Egypt lie deposed Muslama from a command, in 


MAHOMET AND WS SUCCESSORS. 


429 


which he had been placed by Muhegir, and ordered him to 
remain in one of the Egyptian towns a prisoner at large. 

He was grieved to perceive the mischief that had been done 
in Africa, during his absence, by Muhegir, who, out of mere 
envy and jealousy, had endeavored to mar and obliterate all 
traces of his good deeds; dismantling the cities he had built, 
destroying his public edifices at Caerwan, and transferring 
the inhabitants to another place. Acbah stripped him of his 
command, placed him in irons, and proceeded to remedy the 
evils he had perpetrated. The population was restored to 
Caerwan, its edifices were rebuilt, and it rose from its tempo¬ 
rary decline more prosperous and beautiful than ever. Acbah 
then left Zohair Ibn Kais in command of this metropolis, and 
resumed his career of western conquest, carrying Muhegir with 
him in chains. He crossed the kingdom of Numidia, now 
Algiers, and the vast regions of Mauritania, now Morocco, 
subduing their infidel inhabitants or converting them with 
the sword, until, coming to the western shores of Africa, he 
spurred his charger into the waves of the Atlantic until they 
rose to- his saddle girths; then raising his scimetar toward 
heaven, “ Oh Allah!” cried the zealous Moslem, “did not these 
profound waters prevent me, still further would I carry the 
knowledge of thy law, and the reverence of thy holy name.” 

While Acbah was thus urging his victorious way to the utter¬ 
most bounds of Mauritania, tidings overtook him that the 
Greeks and barbarians were rising in rebellion in his rear; 
that the mountains were pouring down their legions, and that 
his city of Caerwan was in imminent danger. He had in fact 
incurred the danger against which the late Caliph Omar had 
so often cautioned his too adventurous generals. Turning his 
steps he hastened back, marching at a rapid rate. As he 
passed through Zab or Numidia, he was harassed by a horde 
of Berbers or Moors, headed by Aben Cahina, a native chief of 
daring prowess, who had descended from the fastnesses of the 
mountains, in which he had taken refuge from the invaders. 
The' warrior, with his mountain band, hung on the rear of the 
army, picking off stragglers, and often carrying havoc into the 
broken ranks, but never venturing on a pitched battle. He 
gave over his pursuit as they crossed the bounds of Numidia. 

On arriving at Caerwan Acbah found everything secure, the 
rebellion having been suppressed by the energy and bravery 
of Zohair, aided by an associate warrior, Omar Ibn Ali, of the 
tribe ci Koreish. 


430 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Acbah now distributed a part of his army about the neigh* 
borhood, formed of the residue a flying camp of cavalry, and 
leaving Zohair and his brave associate to maintain the safety 
of the metropolis, returned to scour the land of Zab, and take 
vengeance on the Berber chief who had harassed and insulted 
him when on the march. 

He proceeded without opposition as far as a place called 
,Tehuda; when in some pass or defile he found himself sur¬ 
rounded by a great host of Greeks and Berbers, led on by the 
mountain chief Aben Cahina. In fact, both Christians and 
Moors, who had so often been in deadly conflict in these very 
regions, had combined to drive these new intruders from the 
land. 

Acbah scanned the number and array of the advancing 
enemy, and saw there was no retreat, and that destruction 
was inevitable. He marshalled his little army of horsemen, 
however, with great calmness, put up the usual prayers, and 
exhorted his men to fight valiantly. Summoning Muliegir to 
his presence, “This,” said he, “is a day of liberty and gain for 
all true Moslems, for it is a day of martyrdom. I would not 
deprive you of so great a chance for paradise.” So saying, he 
ordered his chains to be taken off. 

Muhegir thanked him for the favor, and expressed his deter¬ 
mination to die in the cause of the faith. Acbah then gave 
him arms and a horse, and both of them, drawing their swords, 
broke the scabbards in token that they would fight until vic- 
/ tory or death. The battle was desperate, and the carnage 
terrible. Almost all the Moslems fought to the very death, 
asking no quarter. Acbah was one of the last of his devoted 
band, and his corpse was found, scimetar in hand, upon a heap 
of the enemy whom he had slain. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

MOAWYAH NAMES HIS SUCCESSOR—HIS LAST ACTS AND DEATH- 
TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER. 

Moawyah was now far advanced in years, and aware that 
he had not long to live; he sought therefore to accomplish a 
measure which he had long contemplated, and which was in¬ 
dicative of his ambitious character and his pride of family. It 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


431 

was to render the Caliphat hereditary, and to perpetuate it in 
his line. For this purpose he openly named his son Yezid as 
his successor, and requested the different provinces to send 
deputies to Damascus to perform the act of fealty to him. 
The nomination of a successor was what the prophet himself 
had not done, and what Abu Beker, Omar, and Othman had 
therefore declined to do; the attempt to render the Caliphat 
aereditary was in direct opposition to the public will mani¬ 
fested repeatedly in respect to Ah; Yezid, to whom he pro¬ 
posed to bequeath the government, was publicly detested, yet, 
notwithstanding all these objections, such influence had Moa- 
wyah acquired over the public mind that delegates arrived at 
Damascus from all parts, and gave their hands to Yezid in pledge 
of future fealty. Thus was established the dynasty of the Om- 
miades, which held the Caliphat for nearly a hundred years. 
There were fourteen Caliphs of this haughty line, known as 
the Pharaohs of the house of Omaya (or rather Ommiah). The 
ambition of rule manifested in Moawyah, the founder of the 
dynasty, continued even among his remote descendants, who 
exercised sovereignty nearly four centuries afterward in Spain. 
One of them, anxious to ascend the throne in a time of turbu¬ 
lence and peril, exclaimed, “ Only make me king to-day, and 
you may kill me to-morrow!” 

The character of the Caliph had much changed in the hands 
of Moawyah, and in the luxurious city of Damascus assumed 
more and more the state of the oriental sovereigns which it 
superseded. The frugal simplicity of the Arab, and the stern 
virtues of the primitive disciples of Islam, were softening down 
and disappearing among the voluptuous delights of Syria. 
Moawyah, however, endeavored to throw over his favorite city 
of Damascus some of the sanctity with which Mecca and 
Medina were invested. For this purpose he sought to transfer 
jO it, from Medina, the pulpit of the prophet, as also his walk¬ 
ing-staff; 4 ‘for such precious relics of the apostle of God,” 
said he, “ought not to remain among the murderers of Oth- 
cnan.” 

The staff was found after great search, but when the pulpit 
was about to be removed, there occurred so great an eclipse of 
the sun that the stars became visible. The superstitious Arabs 
considered this a signal of divine disapprobation, and the pul¬ 
pit was suffered to remain in Medina. 

Feeling his end approaching, Moawyah summoned his son 
Yezid to his presence, and gave advice full of experience and 


432 


MAR0ME1 AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


wisdom. “ Confide in the Arabs,” said he, “ as the sure foun* 
dation of your power. Prize the Syrians, for they are faithful 
and enterprising, though prone to degenerate when out of their 
own country. Gratify the people of Irak in all their demands, 
for they are restless and turbulent, and would unsheathe a 
hundred thousand scimetars against thee on the least provo¬ 
cation.” 

“There are four rivals, my son,” added he, “on whom thou 
must keep a vigilant eye. The first is Hosein, the son of Ali, 
who has great influence in Irak, but he is upright and sincere, 
and thy own cousin; treat him, therefore, with clemency, if 
he fall within thy power. The second is Abdallah Ibn Omar; 
but he is a devout man, and will eventually come under alle¬ 
giance to thee. The third is Abda’lrahman; but he is a man of 
no force of mind, and merely speaks from the dictates of 
others; he is, moreover, incontinent, and a gambler; he is not 
a rival to be feared. The fourth is Abdallah Ibn Zobeir; he 
unites the craft of the fox with the strength and courage of 
the lion. If he appear against thee, oppose him valiantly; if 
he offer peace, accept it, and spare the blood of thy people. If 
he fall within your power, cut him to pieces!” 

Moawyah was gathered to his fathers in the sixtieth year 
of the Hegira, A. d. 679, at the age of seventy, or, as some say, 
seventy-five years, of which he had reigned nearly twenty. 
He was interred in Damascus, which he had made the capital 
of the Moslem empire, and which continued to be so during 
the dynasty of the Ommiades. The inscription of his signet 
was, “Every deed hath its meed;” or, according to others, 
“All power rests with God.” 

Though several circumstances in his reign savor of crafty, 
and even treacherous policy, yet he bears a high name in 
Moslem hi :tory. His courage was undoubted, and of a gener- 
erous kind; for though fierce in combat, he was clement in 
victory. He prided himself greatly upon being of the tribe of 
Koreish, and was highly aristocratical before he attained to 
sovereign power; yet he was affable and accessible at all times, 
and made himself popular among his people. His ambition 
was tempered with some considerations of justice. He as¬ 
sumed the throne, it is true, by the aid of the sc^metar, without 
regular election; but he subsequently bought c A the right of 
his rival Hassan, the legitimate Caliph, and transcended mu* 
lificently all the stipulations of his purchase, presenting him, 
\t one tima with four million pieces of gold. One almost 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


433 


gards with incredulity the stories of immense sums passing 
from hand to hand among these Arab conquerors, as freely as 
bags of dates in their native deserts; but it must be recollected 
they had the plundering of the rich empires of the East, and 
as yet were flush with the spoils of recent conquests. 

The liberality of Moawyah is extolled as being beyond all 
bounds; one instance on record of it, however, savors of policy. 
He gave Ayesha a bracelet valued at a hundred thousand 
pieces of gold, that had formerly perhaps sparkled on the arm 
of some Semiramis; but Ayesha, he knew, was a potent friend 
and a dangerous enemy. 

Moawyah was sensible to the charms of poetry, if we may 
judge from the following anecdotes: 

A robber, who had been condenmed by the Cadi to have his 
head cut off, appealed to the Caliph in a copy of verses, plead¬ 
ing the poverty and want by which he had been driven. 
Touched by the poetry, Moawyah reversed the sentence, and 
gave the poet a purse of gold, that he might have no plea of 
necessity for repeating the crime. 

Another instance was that of a young Arab, who had mar¬ 
ried a beautiful damsel, of whom he was so enamored that he 
lavished all his fortune upon her. The governor of Cufa, hap¬ 
pening to see her, was so struck with her beauty that he took 
her from the youth by force. The latter made his complaint 
to the Caliph in verse, poured forth with Arab eloquence, and 
with all the passion of a lover, praying redress or death. 
Moawyah, as before, was moved by the poetic appeal, and 
sent orders to the governor of Cufa to restore the wife to her 
husband. The governor, infatuated with her charms, en¬ 
treated the Caliph to let him have the enjoyment of her for 
one year, and then to take his head. The curiosity of the 
Caliph was awakened by this amorous contest, and he caused 
the female to be sent to him. Struck with her ravishing 
beauty, with the grace of her deportment, and the eloquence oi 
her expressions, he could not restrain his admiration; and in 
the excitement of the moment told her to choose between the 
young Arab, the governor of Cufa, and himself. She ac¬ 
knowledged the honor proffered by the Caliph to be utterly 
beyond her merit; but avowed that affection and duty still 
inclined her to her husband. Her modesty and virtue de^ 
lighted Moawyah even more than her beauty; he restored 
her to her husband, and enriched them both with princely 
munificence. 


434 


MAHOMET AMD HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

SUCCESSION OF YEZID, SEVENTH CALIPH—FINAL FORTUNES OF 
HOSEIN, THE SON OF ALI. 

Yezid, the son of Moawyah, succeeded to the Caliphat with¬ 
out the ceremony of an election. His inauguration took place 
in the new moon of the month Rajeb, in the sixtieth year of 
the Hegira, coincident with the seventh day of April in the 
year of our Lord 680. He was thirty-four years of age, and is 
described as tall and thin, with a ruddy countenance pitted 
with the small-pox, black eyes, curled hair, and a comely beard. 
He was not deficient in talent, and possessed the popular gift 
of poetry. The effect of his residence among the luxuries and 
refinements of Syria was evinced in a fondness for silken rai¬ 
ment and the delights of music; but he was stigmatized as 
base-spirited, sordid, and covetous; grossly sensual, and scan 
dalously intemperate. 

Notwithstanding all this, he was readily acknowledged as 
Caliph throughout the Moslem empire, excepting by Mecca, 
Medina, and some cities of Babylonia. His first aim was to 
secure undisputed possession of the Caliphat. The only com¬ 
petitors from whom he had danger to apprehend were Hosein, 
the son of Ali, and Abdallah, the son of Zobeir. They were 
both at Medina, and he sent orders to Waled I bn Otbah, the 
governor of that city, to exact from them an oath of fealty. 
Waled, who was of an undecided character, consulted Merwan 
Ibn Hakem, formerly secretary of Othman, and suspected of 
forging the letter which effected the ruin of that Caliph. He 
was in fact one of the most crafty as well as able men of the 
age. His advice to the governor was to summon Hosein and 
Abdallah to his presence, before they should hear of the death 
of Moawyah, and concert any measures of opposition; then 
to tender to them the oath of fealty to Yezid, and, should they 
refuse, to smite off their heads. 

Hosein and Abdallah discovered the plot in time to effect 
their escape with their families to Mecca, where they declared 
themselves openly in opposition to Yezid. In a little while 
Hosien received secret messages from the people of Cufa, in¬ 
viting him to their city, assuring him not merely of protection, 
but of joyful homage as the son of Ali, the legitimate successor 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


43 5 


of tlie prophet. He had only, they said, to show himself in 
their city, and all Babylonia would rise in arms in his favor. 

Hosein sent his cousin. Muslim Ibn Okail, to ascertain the 
fcruth of these representations, and to foment the spirit of in¬ 
surrection should it really exist among the people of Cufa. 
Muslim made his way, almost unattended, and with great peril 
and hardship, across the deserts of Irak. On arriving at Cufa 
he was well received by the party of Hosein; they assured him 
that eighteen thousand men were ready to sacrifice their blood 
and treasure in casting down the usurper and upholding the 
legitimate Caliph. Every day augmented the number of ap¬ 
parent zealots in the cause, until it amounted to one hundred 
and forty thousand. Of all this Muslim sent repeated accounts 
to Hosein, urging him to come on, and assuring him that the 
conspiracy had been carried on with such secrecy that Nu’man 
Ibn Baschir, the governor of Cufa, had no suspicion of it. 

But though the conspiracy had escaped the vigilance of Nu’¬ 
man, intimation of it had reached the Caliph Yezid at Damas¬ 
cus, who sent instant orders to Obeid’allah, the emir of Bassora, 
to repair with all speed to Cufa, displace its negligent gover¬ 
nor, and take that place likewise under his command. 

Obeid’allah was the son of Zi\aa, and inherited all the energy 
of his father. Aware that the moment was critical, he set off 
from Bassora with about a score of fleet horsemen. The peo¬ 
ple of Cufa were on the lookout for the arrival of Hosein, which 
was daily expected, when Obeid’allah rode into the city in the 
twilight at the head of his troopers. He wore a black turban, 
as was the custom likewise with Hosein. The populace crowded 
round him, hailing the supposed grandson ox the prophet. 

“Stand off!” cried the horsemen fiercely, “ft is the emir 
Obeid’allah.” 

The crowd shrank back abashed and disappointed, and the 
emir rode on to the castle. The popular chagrin increased 
when it was known that he had command of the province; for 
he was reputed a second Ziyad in energy and decision. His 
measures soon proved his claims to that character. B.e dis¬ 
covered and disconcerted the plans of the conspirators; drove 
Muslim to a premature outbreak; dispersed his hasty levy, and 
took him prisoner. The latter shed bitter tears on his capture; 
not on his own account, but on the account of Hosein, whom 
he feared his letters and sanguine representations had involved 
in ruin, by inducing him to come on to Cufa, The head of 
Muslim was struck off and sent to the Caliph. 


436 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


His letters had indeed produced the dreaded effect. On 
receiving them Hosein prepared to comply with the earnest in¬ 
vitation of the people of Cufa. It was in vain his friends re¬ 
minded him of the proverbial faithlessness of these people; it 
was in vain they urged him to wait until they had committed 
themselves, by openly taking the field. It was in vain that his 
near relative Abdallah Ibn Abbas urged him at least to leave 
the females of his family at Mecca, lest he should be massacred 
in the midst of them, like the Caliph Othman. Hosein, in the 
true spirit of a Moslem and predestinarian, declared he would 
leave the event to God, and accordingly set out with his wives 
and children, and a number of his relatives, escorted by a 
handful of Arab troops. 

Arrived in the confines of Babylonia, he was met by a body 
of a thousand horse, led on by Harro, an Arab of the tribe of 
Temimah. He at first supposed them to be a detachment of 
his partisans sent to meet him, but was soon informed by Harro 
that he came from the emir Obeid’allah to conduct him and all 
the people with him to Cufa. 

Hosein haughtily refused to submit to the emir’s orders, and 
represented that he came in peace, invited by the inhabitants 
of Cufa, as the rightful Caliph. He set torth at the same time 
the justice of his claims, and endeavored to enlist Harro in his 
cause; but the latter, though in nowise hostile to him, avoided 
committing himself, and urged him to proceed quietly to Cufa 
under his escort. 

While they were yet discoursing, four horsemen rode up ac¬ 
companied by a guide. One of these named Thirmah was 
known to Hosein, and was reluctantly permitted by Harro to 
converse with him apart. Hosein inquired about the situation 
of things at Cufa. “ The nobles,” replied the other, “are now 
against you to a man; some of the common people are still 
with you; by to-morrow, however, not a scimetar but will be 
unsheathed against you.” 

Hosein inquired about Kais, a messenger whom he had sent 
m advance to apprise his adherents of his approach. He had 
been seized on suspicion, ordered as a test, by Obeid’allah, to 
curse Hosein and his father Ali, and on his refusing had been 
thrown headlong from the top of the citadel. 

Hosein shed tears at hearing the fate of his faithful mes¬ 
senger. “ There be some,” said he, in the words of the Koran, 
“who are already dead, and some who living expect death. 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


437 


Let their mansions, oh God, be in the gardens of paradise, and 
receive us with them to thy mercy.” 

Thirmah represented to Hosein that his handful of followers 
would be of no avail against the host prepared to oppose him 
in the plains of Cufa, and offered to conduct him to the im¬ 
pregnable mountains of Aja, in the province of Naja, where 
ten thousand men of the tribe of Tay might soon be assembled 
to defend him. He declined his advice, however, and ad¬ 
vanced toward Kadesia, the place famous for the victory over 
the Persians. Harro and his cavalry kept pace with him, 
watching every movement, but offering no molestation. The 
mind of Hosein, however, was darkened by gloomy forebod¬ 
ings. A stupor at times hung over his faculties as he rode 
slowly along; he appeared to be haunted with a presentiment 
of death. 

“We belong to God, and to God we must return,” exclaimed 
he as he roused himself at one time from a dream or reverie. 
He had beheld in his phantasy a horseman who had addressed 
him in warning words: “Men travel in the night, and their 
destiny travels in the night to -meet them.” This he pro¬ 
nounced a messenger of death. 

In this dubious and desponding mood he was brought to a 
halt, near the banks of the Euphrates, by the appearance of 
four thousand men, in hostile array, commanded by A mar Ibn 
Saad. These, likewise, had been sent out by the emir Obeid’- 
allah, who was full of uneasiness lest there should be some 
popular movement in favor of Hosein. The latter, however, 
was painfully convinced by this repeated appearance of hostile 
troops, without any armament in ais favor, that the fickle 
people of Cufa were faithless to him. He held a parley with 
Amar, who was a pious and good man, and had come out 
very unwillingly against a descendant of the prophet, stated 
to him the manner in which he had been deceived by the peo¬ 
ple of Cufa, and now offered to return to Mecca. Amar dis¬ 
patched a fleet messenger to apprise the emir of this favorable 
offer, hoping to be excused from using violence against Hosein. 
Obeid’allah wrote in reply: “Get between him and the Eu¬ 
phrates ; cut him off from the water as he did Othman; force 
him to acknowledge allegiance to Yezid, and then we will 
treat of terms. ” 

Amar obeyed these orders with reluctance, and the little 
camp of Hosein suffered the extremities of thirst. Still he 


438 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


could not be brought to acknowledge Yezid as Caliph. He 
now offered three things, either to go to Damascus and nego¬ 
tiate matters personally with Yezid; to return into Arabia; or 
to repair to some frontier post in Khorassan and fight against 
the Turks. These terms were likewise transmitted by Amar 
to Obeid’allah. 

The emir was exasperated at these delays, which he consid¬ 
ered as intended to gain time for tampering with the public 
feeling. His next letter to Amar was brief and explicit. ‘ ‘ If 
Hosein and his men submit and take the oath of allegiance, 
treat them kindly; if they refuse, slay them—ride over them— 
trample them under the feet of thy horses!” This letter was 
sent by Shamar, a warrior of note, and of a fierce spirit. He 
Jiad private instructions. “ If Amar fail to do as I have or¬ 
dered, strike off his head and take command of his troops.” 
He was furnished also with a letter of protection, and pass¬ 
ports for four of the sons of Ali, who had accompanied their 
brother Hosein. 

Amar, on receiving the letter of the emir, had another par¬ 
ley with Hosein. He found him in front of his tent convers¬ 
ing with his brother A1 Abbas, just after the hour of evening 
prayer, and made known to him the peremptory demand of 
the emir and its alternative. He also produced the letter of 
protection and the passports for his brothers, but they refused 
to accept them. 

Hosein obtained a truce until the morning to consider the 
demand of the emir; but his mind was already made up. He 
saw that all hope of honorable terms was vain, and he resolved 
to die. 

After the departure of Amar, he remained seated alone at 
the door of his tent, leaning on his sword, lost in gloomy cogi¬ 
tation on the fate of the coming day. A heaviness again came 
over him, with the same kind of portentous fantasies that he 
had already experienced. The approach of his favorite sister, 
Zenaib, roused him. He regarded her with mournful signifi¬ 
cance. “I have just seen,” said he, “in a dream, our grand- 
sire the prophet, and he said, 4 Thou wilt soon be with me in 
paradise.’ ” 

The boding mind of Zenaib interpreted the portent. “Woe 
unto us and our family,” cried she, smiting her breast; “our 
mother Fatima is dead, and our father Ali and our brother 
Hassan ! Alas for the desolation of the past and the destruc¬ 
tion that is to come I” So saving, her grief overcame her am* 


MAilOMET AND IIIS SUCCESS OHS. 


439 


she fell into a swoon. Hosein raised her tenderly, sprinkled 
water in her face, and restored her to consciousness. He en¬ 
treated her to rely with confidence on God, reminding her that 
all the people of the earth must die, and everything that exists 
must perish, but that God, who created them, would restore 
them and take them to himself. “ My father, and my mother, 
and my brother,” said he, “ were better than I, yet they died, 
and every Moslem has had an example in the death of the 
apostle of God.” Taking her then by the hand, he led her into 
the tent, charging her, in case of his death, not to give way 
thus to immoderate sorrow. 

He next addressed his friends and followers. “ These troops 
by whom we are surrounded,” said he, “ seek no life but mine, 
and will be contented with my death. Tarry not with me, 
therefore, to your destruction, but leave me to my fate.” 

“ God forbid,” cried A1 Abbas, “that we should survive your 
fall;” and his words were echoed by the rest. 

Seeing his little band thus determined to share his desperate 
fortunes, Hosein prepared to sell their lives dear, and make 
their deaths a memorable sacrifice. By his orders all the tents 
were disposed in twp lines, and the cords interwoven so as to 
form barriers on both sides of the camp, while a deep trench 
in the rear was filled with wood, to be set on fire in case of 
attack. It was assailable, therefore, only in front. This done, 
the devoted band, conscious that the next day was to be their 
last, passed the night in prayer, while a troop of the enemy’s 
horse kept riding round to prevent their escape. 

When the morning dawned, Hosein prepared for battle. 
His whole force amounted only to twoscore foot soldiers and 
two-and-thirty horse; but all were animated with the spirit 
of martyrs. Hosein and several of his chief men washed, an¬ 
ointed, and perfumed themselves; “for in a little while,” said 
they, “ we shall be with the black-eyed Houris of paradise.” 

His steadfastness of soul, however, was shaken by the loud 
lamentations of his sisters and daughters, and the thought of 
the exposed and desolate state in which his death would leave 
them. He called to mind, too, the advice which he had neg¬ 
lected of Abdallah Ibn Abbas, to leave his women in safety at 
Mecca. “God will reward thee, Abdallah!” exclaimed he, in 
the fulness of his feelings. 

A squadron of thirty horse, headed by Harro, now wheeled 
up, but they came as friends and allies. Harro repented him 
of having given the first check to Hosein, and now came in 


440 


MAHOMET ANT) HIS SUCCESSORS. 


atonement to fight and die for him. “Alas for you men of 
Cufa!” cried he, as Amar and his troops approached; “you 
have invited the descendant of the prophet to your city, and 
now you come to fight against him. You have cut off from 
him and his family the waters of the Euphrates, which are 
free even to infidels and the beasts of the field, and have shut 
him up like a lion in the toils.” 

Amar began to justify himself and to plead the orders of the 
emir; but the fierce Shamar cut short all parley by letting fly 
an arrow into the camp of Hosein, calling all to witness that 
he struck the first blow. A skirmish ensued, but the men of 
Hosein kept within their camp, where they could only be 
reached by the archers. From time to time there were single 
combats in defiance, as was customary with the Arabs. In 
these the greatest loss was on the side of the enemy, for 
Hosein’s men fought with the desperation of men resolved on 
death. 

Amar now made a general assault, but the camp, being open 
only in front, was successfully defended. Shamar and his fol¬ 
lowers attempted to pull down the tents, but met with vigorous 
resistance. He thrust his lance through the tent of Hosein, 
and called for fire to burn it. The women ran out shriek¬ 
ing. “The fire of Jehennam be thy portion!” cried Hosein*, 
“wouldst thou destroy my family?” 

Even the savage Shamar stayed his hand at the sight of 
defenceless women, and he and his band drew off with the loss 
of several of their number. 

Both parties desisted from the fight at the hour of noontide 
prayer; and Hosein put up the prayer of Fear, which is only 
used in time of extremity. 

When the prayers were over the enemy renewed the assault, 
but chiefly with arrows from a distance. The faithful fob 
lowers of Hosein were picked off one by one, until he was left 
almost alone; yet no one ventured to close upon him. Ad 
arrow from a distance pierced his little son Abdallah, whom 
he had upon his knee. Hosein caught his blood in the hollow 
of his hand and threw it toward heaven. “Oh G-od,” ex¬ 
claimed he, “if thou withholdest help from us, at least take 
vengeance on the wicked for this innocent blood.” 

His nephew, a beautiful child with jewels in his ears, was 
likewise wounded in his arms. “ Allah will receive thee, my 
child,” said Hosein; “thou wilt soon be with thy forefathers 
in paradise.” 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


441 


At this moment ZeinaD rushed forth, imprecating the ven¬ 
geance of Heaven upon the murderers of her family. Her 
voice was overpowered by the oaths and curses of Shamar, 
who closed with his men upon Hosein. The latter fought 
desperately, and laid many dead around him, but his strength 
was failing him; it became a massacre rather than a fight; he 
sank to the earth, and was stripped ere life was extinct. 
Thirty wounds were counted in his body, and four-and-thirty 
bruises. His head was then cut off to be sent to Obeid’allah, 
and Shamar, with his troops, rode forward and backward over 
the body, as he had been ordered, until it was trampled into 
the earth. 

Seventy-two followers of Hosein were slain in this massacre, 
seventeen of whom were descendants from Fatima. Eighty- 
eight of the enemy were killed, and a great number wounded. 
All the arms and furniture of Hosein and his family were 
taken as lawful spoils, although against the command of 
Amar. 

Shamar dispatched one of his troopers to bear the head of 
Hosein to the emir Obeid’allah. He rode with all speed, but 
arrived at Cufa after the gates of the castle were closed. 
Taking the gory trophy to his own house until morning, he 
showed it with triumph to his wife; but she shrank from him 
with horror, as one guilty of the greatest outrage to the family 
of the prophet, and from that time forward renounced all inter¬ 
course with him. 

When the head was presented to Obeid’allah, he smote it 
on the mouth with his staff. A venerable Arab present was 
shocked at his impiety. “By Allah!” exclaimed he, “ I have 
seen those lips pressed by the sacred lips of the prophet!” 

As Obeid’allah went forth from the citadel, he beheld several 
women, meanly attired and seated disconsolately on the 
ground at the threshold. He had to demand three times who 
they were, before he was told that it was Zeinab, sister of 
Hosein, and her maidens. “Allah be praised,” cried he, with 
ungenerous exultation, “who has brought this proud woman 
to shame, and wrought death upon her family.” “Allah be 
praised,” retorted Zeinab, haughtily, “who hath glorified our 
family by his holy apostle Mahomet. As to my kindred, death 
was decreed to them, and they have gone to their resting-place; 
but God will bring you and them together, and will judge be¬ 
tween you.” 

The wrath of the emir was inflamed by this reply, and his 


442 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


friends, fearful he might oe provoked to an act of violence, 
reminded him that she was a woman and unworthy of his 
anger. 

“Enough,” cried he; “let her revile; Allah'has given my 
soul full satisfaction in the death of her brother, and the ruin 
of her rebellious race.” 

“True!” replied Zeinab, “you have indeed destroyed our 
men, and cut us Up root and branch. If that be any satisfac¬ 
tion to your soul, you have it.” 

The emir looked at her with surprise. “ Thou art, indeed,” 
said he, “a worthy descendant of Ali, who was a poet and a 
man of courage.” 

“Courage,” replied Zeinab, “is not a woman’s attribute; but 
what my heart dictates my tongue shall utter.” 

The emir cast his eyes on Ali, the son of Hosein, a youth 
just approaching manhood, and ordered him to be beheaded. 
The proud heart of Zeinab now gave way. Bursting into tears 
she flung her arms round her nephew. “Hast thou not drunk 
deep enough of the blood of our family?” cried she to Obeid’- 
allali; “ and dost thou thirst for the blood of this youth? Take 
mine too with it, and let me die with him. 

The emir gazed on her again, and with greater astonish¬ 
ment ; he mused for awhile, debating with himself, for he was 
disposed to slay the lad; but was moved by the tenderness of 
Zeinab. At length his better feelings prevailed, and the life of 
Ali was spared. 

The head of Hosein was transmitted to the Caliph Yezid, at 
Damascus, in charge of the savage-hearted Shamar; and with 
it were sent Zeinab and her women, and the youth Ali. The 
latter had a chain round his neck, but the youth carried him¬ 
self proudly, and would never vouchsafe a word to his con¬ 
ductors. 

When Shamar presented the head with the greetings of 
Obeid’allah, the Caliph shed tears, for he recalled the dying 
counsel of his father with respect to the son of Ali. “ Oh 
Hosein!” ejaculated he, “hadst thou fallen into my hands 
thou wouldst not have been slain.” Then giving vent to his 
indignation against the absent Obeid’allah, “The curse of 
God,” exclaimed he, “be upon the son of Somyah.”* 

He had been urged by one of his courtiers to kill Ali, and 


* A sneer at Obeid’allah’s illegitimate descent from Somyah, the wife of a Greek 
slave. 



MAHOMET AND IJIS SUCCESSORS. 


443 


extinguish the whole generation of Hosein, but milder coun¬ 
sels prevailed. When the women and children were brought 
before him, in presence of the Syrian nobility, he was shocked 
at their mean attire, and again uttered a malediction on Obeid’- 
allali. In conversing with Zeinab, he spoke with disparage¬ 
ment of her father Ah and her brother Hosein, but the proud 
heart of this intrepid woman again rose to her lips, and she re¬ 
plied with a noble scorn and just invective that shamed him 
to silence. 

Yezid now had Zeinab and the other females of the family of 
Hosein treated with proper respect; baths were provided for 
them, and apparel suited to their rank; they were entertained 
in his palace, and the widowed wives of his father Moawyah 
came and kept them company, and joined with them in 
mourning for Hosein. Yezid acted also with great kindness 
toward Ali and Amru, the sons of Hosein, taking them with 
him in his walks. Amru was as yet a mere child. Yezid 
asked him one day jestingly, “Wilt thou fight with my son 
Khaled?” The urchin’s eye flashed fire. “ Give him a knife,” 
cried he, “ and give me one!” “ Beware of this child,” said a 
crafty old courtier who stood by, and who was an enemy to 
the house of Ali. “Beware of this child; depend upon it, one 
serpent is the parent of another.” 

After a time when the family of Hosein wished to depart for 
Medina, Yezid furnished them abundantly with every com¬ 
fort for the journey, and a safe convoy under a careful officer, 
who treated them with all due deference. When their journey 
was accomplished, Zeinab and Fatima, the young daughter of 
Hosein, would have presented their conductor with some of 
their jewels, but the worthy Syrian declined their offer. 
“Had I acted for reward,” said he, “less than these jewels 
would have sufficed; but what I have done was for the lovo 
of God, and for the sake of your relationship to the prophet.” 

The Persians hold the memory of Hosein in great venera¬ 
tion, entitling him Shahed or the Martyr, and Seyejed or 
Lord; and he and his lineal descendants for nine generations 
are enrolled among the twelve Imams or Pontiffs of the Per¬ 
sian creed. The anniversary of his martyrdom is called Eus 
Hosein (the day of Hosein), and is kept with great solemnity. 
A splendid monument w~as erected in after years on the spot 
where he fell, and was called in Arabic Meshed Hosein, The 
Sepulchre of Hosein. The Shyites, or sectaries of Ali, relate 
divers prodigies as having signalized his martyrdom. The 


444 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


sun withdrew his light, the stars twinkled at noonday and 
clashed against each other, and the clouds rained showers of 
blood. A supernatural light beamed from the head of the 
martyr, and a flock of white birds hovered around it. These 
miracles, however, are all stoutly denied by the sect of Mos¬ 
lems called Sonnites, who hold Ali and his race in abomination. 


CHAPTER XLVIIo 

INSURRECTION OF ABDALLAH IBN ZOBEIR—MEDINA TAKEN AND 
SACKED—MECCA BESIEGED—DEATH OF YEZID. 

The death of Hosein had removed one formidable rival of 
Yezid, but gave strength to the claims of another, who was 
scarcely less popular. This was Abdallah, the son of Zobeir; 
honored for his devotion to the faith, beloved for the amenity 
of his manners, and of such adroit policy that he soon man¬ 
aged to be proclaimed Caliph by the partisans of the house of 
Haschem, and a large portion of the people of Medina and 
Mecca. The martyrdom, as he termed it, of Hosein fur¬ 
nished him a theme for public harangues, with which, after 
his inauguration, he sought to sway the popular feelings. He 
called to mind the virtues of that grandson of the prophet, his 
pious watchings, fastings, and prayers; the perfidy of the peo¬ 
ple of Cufa, to which he had fallen a victim: the lofty heroism 
of his latter moments, and the savage atrocities which had ac¬ 
companied his murder. The public mind was heated by these 
speeches; the enthusiasm awakened for the memory of Hosein 
was extended to his politic eulogist. An Egyptian soothsayer, 
famed for skill in divination, and who had studied the prophet 
Daniel, declared that Abdallah would live and die a king; and 
this operated powerfully in liis favor among the superstitious 
Arabs, so that his party rapidly increased in numbers. 

The Caliph Yezid, although almost all the provinces of the 
empire were still in allegiance to him, was alarmed at the 
movements of this new rival. He affected, however, to re¬ 
gard him with contempt, and sent a silver collar to Merwan 
Ibn Hakem, then governor of Medina, directing him to put it 
round the neck of the “mock Caliph,” should he persist in his 
folly, and send him in chains to Damascus. Merwan, how- 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


445 


ever, who was of a wily character himself, and aware of the 
craft and courage of Abdallah, and his growing popularity in 
Medina, evaded the execution of the order. 

Yezid had no better success in his endeavors to crush the 
rising power of Abdallah at Mecca. In vain he repeatedly 
changed his governors of that city; each in his turn was out¬ 
witted by the superior sagacity of Abdallah, or overawed by 
the turbulent discontent of the people. 

Various negotiations took place between Yezid and these 
disaffected cities, and dispatches were sent from the latter to 
Damascus; but these only rendered the schism in the Caliphat 
more threatening. The deputies brought back accounts of the 
dissolute life of Yezid, which shocked the pious and abstemious 
Arabs of the sacred cities. They represented him as destitute 
of religion and morality; neglectful of the hours of worship; a 
gross sensualist addicted to wine and banqueting; an effemi¬ 
nate voluptuary, passing his time amid singing and dancing 
women, listening to music and loose minstrelsy, and sur¬ 
rounded by dogs and eunuchs. 

The contempt and loathing caused by their representations 
were fomented by the partisans of Abdallah Ibn Zobeir, and 
extended to the whole house of Ommiah, of which Yezid was a 
member. Open rebellion at length broke out in a manner char¬ 
acteristic of the Arabs. During an assemblage in the mosque 
of Medina, one of the conspirators threw his turban on the 
ground, exclaiming, “ I cast off Yezid as I cast off this turban.” 
Another seconded him with the exclamation, “ I cast off Yezid 
as I cast off this shoe.” Heaps of shoes and turbans soon 
showed that the feeling was unanimous. 

The next move was to banish the house of Ommiah and all 
its dependents; but these, to the number of a thousand, took 
refuge in the palace of Merwan Ibn Hakem, the governor, 
who was of that race. Here they were closely besieged and 
sent off to Yezid, imploring instant succor. 

It was with difficulty Yezid could prevail upon any of his 
generals to engage in so unpopular a cause. Meslem Ibn 
Okbah, a stout-hearted but infirm old general, at length un¬ 
dertook it; but observed, with contempt, that a thousand men 
who suffered themselves to be cooped up like fowls, without 
fighting, scarce deserved assistance. 

When the troops were about to depart, Yezid rode about 
among them, his scimetar by his side, and an Arab bow across 
his shoulder, calling upon them to show their loyalty and cour 


446 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


age. His instructions to Meslem were to summon the city of 
Medina, three days in succession, before he made any assault; 
if it refused to surrender, he should, after taking it, give it 
up to three days’ pillage. He charged him, however, to be 
careful of the safety of the youth Ali, son of Hosein, who was 
in the city, but had taken no part in the rebellion. 

Meslem departed at the head of twelve thousand horse and 
five thousand foot. When he arrived before Medina he found 
£j huge trench digged round the city, and great preparations 
made for defence. On three successive days he summoned it 
to surrender, and on each day received a refusal. On the 
fourth day he attacked it by storm, making his assault on the 
east side, that the besieged might be blinded by the rising sun. 
The city held out until most of its prime loaders were slain; it 
would then have capitulated, but the stern old general com¬ 
pelled an unconditional surrender. 

Meslem entered the city sword in hand, and sent instantly 
for Ali, the youthful son of Hosein, whom he placed on his 
own camel, and furnished with a trusty guard, His next care 
was to release the thousand men of the house of Ommiah from 
confinement, lest they should be involved in the sacking of the 
city; this done, he abandoned the place for three days to his 
soldiery, and a scene of slaughter, violence, and rapine ensued, 
too horrible to be detailed. Those of the inhabitants who sui*' 
vived the massacre were compelled to submit as slaves and 
vassals of Yezid. The rigid severity of old Meslem, which far 
surpassed his orders, gained him the appellation of Musreph, 
or The Extortionate. His memory has ever been held in 
odium by the Moslems, for the outrages which he permitted in 
this sacred city. This capture of Medina took place at night, 
in the sixty-third year of the Hegira, and the year 682 of the 
Christian era. 

The old general now marched on to wreak the same fate 
upon Mecca; but his fires were burnt out; he died on the march 
of fatigue, infirmity, and old age, and the command devolved 
on a Syrian general named Hozein Ibn Thamir. The latter led 
his force up to the walls of Mecca, where Abdallah Ibn Zobeir 
commanded in person. For the space of forty days he be¬ 
sieged the city, battering the walls with engines brought from 
Syria. In the course of the siege a part of the Caaba was 
beaten down and the rest burnt. Some ascribe the fire to the 
engines of the besiegers; others affirm that Abdallah, hearing 
a shouting in the night, caused a flaming brand to be elevated 


MAIIOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


447 

on a lance to discover the cause, and that the fire communi¬ 
cated to the veil which covered the edifice. 

Mecca was reduced to extremity, and the inhabitants began 
to dread the fate of Medina, when a swift messenger brought 
to Abdallah Ibn Zobeir the joyful tidings of the death of Yezid. 
He immediately mounted the walls and demanded of the be¬ 
siegers why thpy continued to fight, seeing that their master 
Yezid was no more. They regarded his words as a mere sub' 
terfuge, and continued the attack with increased vigor. The 
intelligence, however, was speedily confirmed. 

Hozein now held a conference with Abdallah; he expressed 
an ardent desire to put an end to all further effusion of kindred 
blood, and proffered the allegiance of himself and his army, in 
which were some of the leading men of Syria. Abdallah, for 
once, was too cautious for his own good. He shrank from 
trusting himself with Hozein and his army; he permitted 
them, however, at their earnest request, to walk in religious 
procession round the ruins of the Caaba, of course without 
arms; after which Hozein and his host departed on the march 
homeward; and the late beleaguered family of Ommiah ac¬ 
companied them to Syria. 

The death of the Caliph Yezid took place at Haw warm, in 
Syria, in the sixty-fourth year of the Hegira, a.d. 683, in the 
thirty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of three years and 
six months. He was cut down in the flower of his days, say 
the Moslem writers, in consequence of his impiety, in ordering 
the sacking of Medina, the burial-place of the prophet; for the 
latter had predicted, “Whoever injureth Medina, shall melt 
away even as salt melteth in water.” The Persian writers 
also, sectarians of Ali, hold the memory of Yezid in abhor¬ 
rence, charging him with the deaths of Hassan and Hosein, 
and accompany his name with the imprecation, “May he be 
accursed of God 1” 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

INAUGURATION OF MOAWYAH II., EIGHTH CALIPH—HIS ABDICA¬ 
TION AND DEATH—MERWiN IBN HAKEM AND ABDALLAH IBN 
ZOBEIR, RIVAL CALIPHS—CIVIL WARS IN SYRIA. 

On the death of Yezid, his son, Moawyah II., was proclaimed 
at Damascus, being the third Caliph of the house of Ommiah 



448 


MAllOMET AND HIS SUCCESSOES. 


He was in the twenty-first year of his age, feeble in mind and 
body, and swayed in his opinions and actions by his favorite 
teacher, Omar Almeksus, of the sect of the Kadarii, who main¬ 
tain the free-will of men, and that a contrary opinion would 
make God the author of sin. 

Moawyah assumed the supreme authority with extreme 
reluctance, and felt his incompetency to its duties; for the 
state of his health obliged him to shun daylight and keep in 
darkened rooms; whence the Arabs, in their propensity to by ¬ 
names, gave him the derisive appellation of Abuleilah, 
“Father of the Night.” 

He abdicated at the end of six months, alleging his incom¬ 
petency. The Ommiades were indignant at his conduct; they 
attributed it, and probably with reason, to the counsels of the 
sage Omar Almeksus, on whom they are said to have wreaked 
their rage by burying him alive. 

Moawyah refused to nominate a successor. His grandfather 
Moawyah, he said, had wrested the sceptre from the hands of 
a better man; his father Yezid had not merited so great a 
trust, and he himself being unworthy and unfit to wield it, 
was equally unworthy to appoint a successor; he left the elec¬ 
tion, therefore, to the chiefs of the people. In all which he 
probably spake according to the dictates of the sage Omar 
Almeksus. 

As soon as he had thrown off the cares of government he 
shut himself up in the twilight gloom of his chamber, whence 
he never stirred until his death, which happened soon after, 
caused, some say, by the plague, others by poison. His own 
diseased frame and morbid temperament, however, account 
sufficiently for his dissolution. 

The election of a Caliph again distracted the Moslem empire. 
The leading men at Damascus determined upon Merwanlbn 
Hakem, of the family of Ommiah, and once the secretary of 
state of Othman, who had so craftily managed the correspond 
ence of that unfortunate Caliph. He was now well stricken 
in years; tall and meagre, with a pale face and yellow beard, 
doubtless tinged according to oriental usage. Those who 
elected him took care to stipulate that he should not nominate 
any of his posterity as his successor; but should be succeeded 
by Khaled, the son of Yezid, as yet a n inor. Merwan, in his 
eagerness for power, pledged himself without hesitation; how 
faithfully he redeemed his pledge will be seen hereafter. 

While this election was held at Damascus, Abdallah Ibo 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


449 


Zobeir was acknowledged as Caliph in Mecca, Medina, and 
throughout Arabia, as also in Khorassan, in Babylonia, and in 
Egypt. 

Another candidate for the supreme power unexpectedly arose 
in Obeid’allah Ibn Ziyad, the emir of Bassora, the same who 
had caused the massacre of Hosein. He harangued an assem- 
- blage of the people of Bassora on the state of the contending 
factions in Syria and Arabia; the importance of their own 
portion of the empire, so capable of sustaining itself in inde¬ 
pendence, and the policy of appointing some able person as a 
protector to watch over the public weal until these dissensions 
should cease, and a Caliph be unanimously appointed. The 
assembly was convinced by his reasoning, and urged him to 
accept the appointment. He declined it repeatedly, with poli¬ 
tic grace, but was at length prevailed upon; and the leaders 
gave him their hands, promising allegiance to him as a provi¬ 
sional chief, until a Caliph should be regularly elected. His 
authority, however, was but of short duration. The people of 
Cufa, who had experienced his tyranny as governor, rejected 
with scorn his election as protector; their example reacted 
upon the fickle Bassorians, who suddenly revoked their late 
act of allegiance, rose in tumultuous opposition to the man 
they had so recently honored, and Obeid’allah was fain to dis¬ 
guise himself in female attire, and take refuge in the house of 
an adherent. During his sway, however, he had secured an 
immense amount of gold from the public treasury. This he 
now shared among his partisans, and distributed by handfuls 
among the multitude; but though he squandered in this way 
above two hundred thousand pieces of gold upon the populace, 
and raised a few transient tumults in his favor, he was ulti¬ 
mately obliged to fly for his life, and his effects were pillaged 
by the rabble. So fared it with the temporary tyrant who 
smote the gory head of the virtuous Hosein. 

He fled by night at the head of only a hundred men; after a 
time weariness compelled him to exchange the camel on which 
he was mounted for an ass. In this humble plight, with 
drooping head, and legs dangling to the ground, journeyed the 
imperious Obeid’allah, who, but the day before, was governor 
of Babylonia, and aspired to the throne of the Caliphs. One 
of his attendants, noticing his dejection, and hearing him mut¬ 
ter to himself, supposed him smitten with contrition, and 
upbraiding himself with having incurred these calamities, as a 
judgment for the death of Hosein: he ventured to suggest his 


450 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


thoughts and to offer consolation; but Obeid’allah quickly let 
him know that his only repentance and self-reproach were for 
not having attacked the faithless Bassorians, and struck off 
their heads at the very outbreak of their revolt. Obeid’allah 
effected his escape into Syria; and arrived at Damascus in 
time to take an active part in the election of Merwan to the 
Caliphat; in the mean time Bassora declared its allegiance to 
Ibn Abdallah Zobeir. 

The claims of Merwan to the Caliphat were acknowledged in 
Syria alone, but Syria, if undivided, was an empire in itself. 
It was divided, however. A powerful faction, headed by De- 
hac Ibn Kais, late governor of Cufa, disputed the pretensions 
of Merwan, and declared for Abdallah. They appeared in 
arms in the plain near Damascus. Merwan took the field 
against them in person; a great and sanguinary battle took 
place; Dehac and fourscore of the flower of Syrian nobility 
were slain, and an immense^ number of their adherents. Vic¬ 
tory declared for Merwan. He called off his soldiers from the 
pursuit, reminding them that the fugitives were their brethren. 

When the head of Dehac was brought to him he turned from 
it with sorrow. ‘ ‘ Alas 1” exclaimed he, ‘ ‘ that an old and worn- 
out man like myself should occasion the young and vigorous 
to be cut to pieces!” 

His troops hailed him as Caliph beyond all dispute, and bore 
him back in triumph to Damascus. He took up his abode in 
the palace of his predecessors, Moawyah and Yezid; but now 
came a harder part of his task. It had been stipulated that at 
his death Khaled the son of Yezid should be his successor; it 
was now urged that he should marry the widow of Yezid, the 
mother of the youth, and thus make himself his legitimate 
guardian. 

The aged Merwan would fain have evaded this condition, 
but it was forced upon him as a measure of policy, and he com¬ 
plied ; no sooner, however, was the marriage solemnized than 
he left his capital and his bride, and set off with an army for 
Egypt, to put down the growing ascendency of Abdallah in that 
region. He sent in advance Amru Ibn Saad, who acted with 
such promptness and vigor that while the Caliph was yet on 
the march he received tidings that the lieutenant of Abdallah 
had been driven from the province, and the Egyptians brought 
under subjection: whereupon Merwan turned his face again 
toward Damascus. 

Intelligence now overtook him that an army under Musah 


MAHOMET ANT) HIS SUCCESSORS. 45 } 

brother of Abdallah, was advancing upon Egypt. The old 
Caliph again faced about, and resumed his march in that 
direction, hut again was anticipated by Amru, who routed 
Musab in a pitched battle, and completely established the sway 
of Merwan over Egypt. The Caliph now appointed his son 
Abd’alaziz to the government of that important country, and 
once more returned to Damascus, whither he was soon followed 
by the victorious Amru. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

STATE OF AFFAIRS IN KHORASSAN—CONSPIRACY AT CUFA—FAC¬ 
TION OF THE PENITENTS; THEIR FORTUNES—DEATH OF THE 
CALIPH MERWAN. 

In the present divided state of the Moslem empire, the people 
of Khorassan remained neuter, refusing to acknowledge either 
Caliph. They appointed Salem, the son of Ziyad, to act as 
regent, until the unity of the Moslem government should be 
restored. He continued for a length of tune in this station, 
maintaining the peace of the province, and winning the hearts 
of the inhabitants by his justice, equity, and moderation. 

About this time there was a sudden awakening among the 
sect of Ali, in Babylonia. The people of Cufa, proverbially 
fickle and faithless, were seized with tardy remorse for the 
fate of Hosein, of which they were conscious of being the 
cause. Those who had not personally assisted in his martyr¬ 
dom formed an association to avenge his death. Above a 
hundred of the chief men of the country joined them; they 
took the name of The Penitents, to express their contrition for 
having been instrumental in the death of the martyr; and they 
chose for their leader one of the veteran companions of the 
prophet, the venerable Solyman Ibn Sorad, who devoted his 
gray hail's to this pious vengeance. 

The awakening spread far and wide; in a little while upward 
of sixteen thousand names were enrolled; a general appeal to 
arms was anticipated throughout the country, and the veteran 
Solyman called upon all true Moslems disposed to prosecute 
this “ holy war,” to assemble at a place called Nochaila. Be¬ 
fore the appointed time, however, the temporary remorse of 
the people of Cufa had subsided; the enthusiasm for the mem* 



452 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


ory of Hosein had cooled throughout the province; intriguing 
meddlers, jealous of the appointment of Solyman, had been at 
•work, and when the veteran came to the place of assemblage 
he found but an inconsiderable number prepared for action. 

He now dispatched two horsemen to Cufa, who arrived* 
there at the hour of the last evening prayer, galloped through 
the streets to the great mosque, rousing the Penitents with the 
war cry of “Vengeance for Hosein.” The call was not lost on 
the real enthusiasts; a kind of madness seized upon many of 
the people, who thronged after the couriers, echoing the cry of 
vengeance. The cry penetrated into the depths of the houses. 
One man tore himself from the arms of a beautiful and tenderly 
beloved wife, and began to arm for battle. She asked him if 
he were mad. “No!” cried he, “but I hear the summons of 
the herald of God, and I fly to avenge the death of Hosein.” 
“ And in whose protection do you leave our child?” “ I com¬ 
mend him and thee to the protection of Allah 1” So saying, he 
departed. 

Another called for a lance and steed; told his daughter that he 
fled from crime to penitence; took a hurried leave of his family 
and galloped to the camp of Solyman. 

Still, when the army of Penitents was mustered on the 
following day it did not exceed four thousand. Solyman flat¬ 
tered himself, however, that reinforcements, promised him 
from various quarters, would join him when on the march. He 
harangued his scanty host, roused their ardor, and marched 
them to the place of Hosein’s murder, where they passed a day 
and night in prayer and lamentation. They then resumed 
their march. Their intention was to depose both Caliphs, 
Merwan and Abdallah, to overthrow the family of Ommiah, 
and restore the throne to the house of Ali; but their first object 
was vengeance on Obeid’allah, the son of Ziyad, to whom they 
chiefly ascribed the murder of Hosein. The aged Solyman led 
his little army of enthusiasts through Syria, continually dis¬ 
appointed of recruits, but unabated in their expectation of aid 
from Heaven, until they were encountered by Obeid’allah with 
an army of twenty thousand horsemen, and cut in pieces. 

In the midst of these internal feuds and dissensions, a spark 
of the old Saracen spirit was aroused by the news of disastrous 
reverses in Northern Africa. We have recorded in a former 
chapter the heroic but disastrous end of Acbah on the plains 
of Numidia, where he and his little army were massacred by a 
Berber host, led on by Aben Cahina. That Moorish chieftain, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


453 


while flushed with victory, had been defeated by Zohair before 
the walls of Caerwan, and the spirits of the Moslems had once 
more revived; especially on the arrival of reinforcements sent 
by Abd’alaziz from Egypt. A sad reverse, however, again 
took place. A large force of imperialists, veteran and well 
armed soldiers from Constantinople, were landed on the African 
coast to take advantage of the domestic troubles of the Mos¬ 
lems, and drive them from their African possessions. Being 
joined by the light troops of Barbary, they attacked Zobeir in 
open field. He fought long and desperately, but being deserted 
by the Egyptian reinforcements, and overpowered by numbers, 
was compelled to retreat to Barca, while the conquering foe 
marched on to Caerwan, captured that city, and made them¬ 
selves masters of the surrounding country. 

It was the tidings of this disastrous reverse, and of the loss 
of the great outpost of Moslem conquest in Northern Africa, 
that roused the Saracen spirit from its domestic feuds. Abd’al- 
malec, the eldest son of the Caliph Merwan, who had already 
served in Africa, was sent with an army to assist Zobeir. He 
met that general in Barca, where he was again collecting an 
army. They united their forces, retraced the westward route 
of victory, defeated the enemy in every action, and replaced 
the standard of the faith on the walls of Caerwan. Having 
thus wiped out the recent disgraces, Abd’almalec left Zobeir in 
command of that region, and returned covered with glory to 
sustain his aged father in the Caliphat at Damascus. 

The latter days of Merwan had now arrived. He had been 
intriguing and faithless in his youth; he was equally so in his 
age. In his stipulations on receiving the Caliphat he had pro¬ 
mised the succession to Khaled, the son of Yezid; he had since 
promised it to his nephew Amru, who had fought his battles-and 
confirmed his power; in his latter days he caused his own son 
Abd’almalec, fresh from African exploits, to be proclaimed his 
successor, and allegiance to be sworn to him. Khaled, his step¬ 
son, reproached him with his breach of faith; in the heat of 
reply, Merwan called the youth by an opprobrious epithet, 
which brought in question the chastity of his mother. This 
unlucky word is said to have caused the sudden death of 
Merwan. His wife, the mother of Khaled, is charged with 
having given him poison; others say that she threw a pillow 
on his face while he slept, and sat on it until he was suffocated. 
He died in the 65th year of the Hegira, a.d. 684, after a brief 
reign of not quite a year. 


454 


MAHOMET AJSJJ HIS SUCCESSORS. 


CHAPTER L. 

INAUGURATION OF ABD’ALMALEC, THE ELEVENTH CALIPH—STORV 
OF AL MOKTAR, THE AVENGER. 

On the death of Merwan, his son Abd’almalec was inaugu¬ 
rated Caliph at Damascus, and acknowledged throughout Syria 
and Egypt, as well as in the newly-conquered parts of Africa. 
He was in the full vigor of life, being about forty years of age; 
his achievements in Africa testify his enterprise, activity, and 
valor, and he was distinguished for wisdom and learning. 
From the time of his father’s inauguration he had been look¬ 
ing forward to the probability of becoming his successor, 
and ambition of sway had taken place of the military ardor of 
his early youth. When the intelligence of his father’s death 
reached him, he was sitting cross-legged, in oriental fashion- 
with the Koran open on his knees. He immediately closed the 
sacred volume, and rising, exclaimed, “Fare thee well, I am 
called to other matters.” 

The accession to sovereign power is said to have wrought a 
change in his character. He had always been somewhat 
superstitious; he now became attentive to signs, omens, and 
dreams, and grew so sordid and covetous that the Arabs, in 
their propensity to give characteristic and satirical surnames, 
used to call him Rafhol Hejer, that is to say, Sweat-Stone, 
equivalent to our vulgar epithet of s kinflin t, 

Abdallah Ibn Zobeir was still acknowledged as Caliph by a 
great portion of the Moslem dominions, and held his seat of 
government at Mecca; this gave him great influence over the 
true believers, who resorted in pilgrimage to the Caaba. 
Abd’almalec determined to establish a rival place of pilgrimage 
within his own dominions. For this purpose he chose the tom- 
pie of Jerusalem, sacred in the eyes of the Moslems, as con¬ 
nected with the acts and revelations of Moses, of Jesus, and of 
Mahomet, and as being surrounded by the tombs of the pro¬ 
phets. He caused this sacred edifice to be enlarged so as to 
include within its walls the steps upon which the Caliph Omar 
prayed on the surrender of that city. It was thus converted 
into a mosque, and the venerable and sanctified stone called 
Jacob’s pillow, on which the patriarch is said to have had his 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


455 


dream, was presented for the kisses of pilgrims, in like manner 
as the black stone of the Caaba. 

There was at this time a general of bold if not ferocious 
character, who played a sort of independent part in the 
troubles and commotions of the Moslem empire. He was the 
son of Abu Obeidah, and was sometimes called A1 Thakifi, 
from his native city Thayef, but won for himself the more 
universal appellation of A1 Moktar, or the Avenger. The first 
notice we find of him is during the short reign of Hassan, the 
son of Ali, being zealously devoted to the family of that 
Caliph. We next find him at Cufa, harboring and assisting 
Muslem, the emissary of Hosein, and secretly fomenting the 
^ conspiracy in favor of the latter. When the emir Obeid’allah 
’ came to Cufa, he was told of the secret practices of A1 Moktar, 
and. questioned him on the subject. Receiving a delusive 
reply, he smote him over the face with his staff, and struck out 
one of his eyes. He then cast him into prison, where he lay 
until the massacre of Hosein. Intercessions were made in his 
favor with the Caliph Yezid, who ordered his release. Tho 
emir executed the order, but gave A1 Moktar notice that if, 
after the expiration of three days, he were found within his 
jurisdiction, his life should be forfeit. 

A1 Moktar departed, uttering threats and maledictions. One 
of his friends who met him inquired concerning the loss of 
his eye. “It was the act of that son of a wanton, Obeid’allah,” 
said he, bitterly; “ but may Allah confound me if I do not one 
day cut him in pieces.” Blood revenge for the death of Hosein 
became now his ruling thought. “ May Allah forsake me,” he 
would say, “ if I do not kill as many in vengeance of that mas¬ 
sacre as were destroyed to avenge the blood of John, the son 
of Zacharias, on whom be peace!” 

He now repaired to Mecca, and presented himself before 
Abdallah Ibn Zobeir, who had recently been inaugurated; but 
he would not take the oath of allegiance until the Caliph had 
declared his disposition to revenge the murder of Hosein. 
“Never,” said he, “ will the affairs of Abdallah prosper, until I 
am at the head of his army taking revenge for that murder.” 

A1 Moktar fought valiantly in defence of the sacred city 
while besieged; but when the siege was raised in consequence 
of the death of Yezid, and Abdallah became generally acknow¬ 
ledged, he found the Caliph growing cold toward him, or 
toward the constant purpose of his thoughts: he left him 
therefore, and set out for Cufa, visiting all the mosques on the 


456 


MAHOMET AND UTS SUCCESSORS. 


way, haranguing the people on the subject of the death of 
Hosein, and declaring himself his avenger. 

On arriving at Cufa he found his self-appointed office of 
avenger likely to be forestalled by the veteran Solyman, who 
was about to depart on his mad enterprise with his crazy Peni¬ 
tents. Calling together the sectaries of Ali, he produced cre¬ 
dentials from Mahomet, the brother of Hosein, which gained 
tor him their confidence, and then represented to them the 
rashness and futility of the proposed expedition; and to his 
opposition may be ascribed the diminished number of volun¬ 
teers that assembled at the call of Solyman. 

While thus occupied he was arrested on a charge of plotting 
«n insurrection with a view to seize upon the province, and 
was thrown into the same prison in which he had been con¬ 
fined by Obeid’allah. During his confinement he kept up a 
correspondence with the sectaries of Ali by letters conveyed 
in the lining of a cap. On the death of the Caliph Merwan 
he was released from prison, and found himself head of the 
Alians, or powerful sect of All, who even offered their adhesion 
to him as Caliph, on condition that he would govern according 
to the Koran, and the Sonna or traditions, and would destroy 
the murderers of Hosein and his family. 

A1 Moktar entered heartily upon the latter part of his duties, 
and soon established his claim to the title of Avenger. The first 
on whom he wreaked his vengeance was the ferocious Shamar, 
who had distinguished himself in the massacre of Hosein. 
Him he overcame and slew. The next was Caulah, who cut 
off the head of Hosein and conveyed it to the emir Obeid’allah. 
Him he beleaguered in his dwelling, and killed, and gave his 
body to the flames. His next victim was Amar Ibn Saad, the 
commander of the army that surrounded Hosein; with him 
he slew his son, and sent both, of their heads to Mahomet, the 
brother of Hosein. He then seized Adi Ibn Hathem, who had 
stripped the body of Hosein while the limbs were yet quivering 
with life. Him he handed over to some of the sect of Ali, who 
stripped him, set him up as a target, and discharged arrows at 
him until they stood out from his body like the quills of a por¬ 
cupine. In this way A1 Moktar went on, searching out the 
murderers of Hosein wherever they were to be found, and in¬ 
flicting on them a diversity of deaths. 

Sustained by the Alians, or sect of Ali, he now maintained a 
military sway in Cufa, and held, in fact, a sovereign authority 
over Babylonia; he felt, however, that his situation was preca- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


457 


rious; an army out of Syria, sent by Abd’almalec, was threat¬ 
ening him on one side; and Musab, brother of the Caliph 
Abdallah, was in great force at Bassora menacing him on the 
other. He now had recourse to stratagems to sustain his 
power, and accomplish his great scheme of vengeance. He 
made overtures to Abdallah, offering to join him with his 
forces. The wary Caliph suspected his sincerity, and re¬ 
quired, as proofs of it, the oath of allegiance from himself and 
his people, and a detachment to proceed against the army of 
Abd’almalec. 

A1 Moktar promptly sent off an officer, named Serjabil, with 
three thousand men, with orders to proceed to Medina. Ab¬ 
dallah, still wary and suspicious, dispatched a shrewd general, 
Abbas Ibn Sahel, with a competent force to meet Serjabil and 
sound his intentions, and if he were convinced there was lurk¬ 
ing treachery, to act accordingly. 

Abbas and Serjabil encountered at the head of their troops on 
the highway to Medina. They had an amicable conference, in 
which Abbas thought he discovered sufficient proof of perfidy. 
He took measures accordingly. Finding the little army of 
Serjabil almost famished for lack of provisions, he killed a great 
number of fat sheep and distributed them among the hungry 
troops. A scene of hurry and glad confusion immediately took 
place. Some scattered themselves about the neighborhood in 
search of fuel; some were cooking, some feasting. In this un¬ 
guarded moment Abbas set upon them with his troops, slew 
Serjabil and nearly four hundred of his men; but gave quarter 
to the rest, most of whom enlisted under his standard. 

A1 Moktar, finding that his good faith was doubted by Ab¬ 
dallah, wrote privately to Mahomet, brother of Hosein, who 
was permitted by the Caliph to reside in Mecca, where he led 
a quiet inoffensive life, offering to bring a powerful army to 
his assistance if he would take up arms. Mahomet sent a 
verbal reply, assuring A1 Moktar of his belief in the sincerity 
of his offers; but declining all appeal to arms, saying he was 
resolved to bear his lot with patience, and leave the event to 
God. As the messenger was departing, he gave him a parting 
word: “Bid .41 Moktar fear God and abstain from shedding 
blood.” 

The pious resignation and passive life of Mahomet were of 
no avail. The suspicious eye of Abdallah was fixed upon him. 
The Cufians of the sect of Ali, and devotees to the memory of 
Hosein, who yielded allegiance to neither of the rival Caliphs, 


458 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


were still permitted to make their pilgrimages to the Caaba, 
and when in Mecca did not fail to do honor to Mahomet Ibn 
Ali and his family. The secret messages of A1 Moktar to Ma¬ 
homet were likewise known. The Caliph Abdallah, suspecting 
a conspiracy, caused Mahomet and his family, and seventeen 
of the principal pilgrims from Cufa, to be arrested, and con¬ 
fined in the edifice by the sacred well Zem Zem, threatening 
them with death unless by a certain time they gave the pledge 
of allegiance. 

From their prison they contrived to send a letter to A1 
Moktar, apprising him of their perilous condition. He assem¬ 
bled the Alians, or sect of Ali, at Cufa, and read the letter. 
“This comes,” said he, “from Mahomet, the son of Ali and 
brother of Hosein. He and his family, the purest of the house 
of your prophet, are shut up like sheep destined for the slaugh¬ 
ter. Will you desert them in their extremity, and leave 
them to be massacred as you did the martyr Hosein and his 
family?” 

The appeal was effectual; the Alians cried out to be led to 
Mecca. A1 Moktar marshalled out seven hundred and fifty 
men, bold riders, hard fighters, well armed and fleetly 
mounted, arranged them in small troops to follow each other 
at considerable intervals, troop after troop like the waves of the 
sea; the leader of the first troop, composed of a hundred and 
fifty men, was Abu Abdallah Aljodali. He set off first; the 
others followed at sufficient distance to be out of sight, but all 
spurred forward, for no time was to be lost. 

Abu Abdallah was the first to enter Mecca. His small troop 
awakened no alarm. He made his way to the well of Zem 
% Zem, crying, “Vengeance for Hosein;” drove off the guard 
and broke open the prison house, whence he liberated Ma¬ 
homet Ibn Ali and his family. 

The tumult brought the Caliph and his guard. Abu Ab¬ 
dallah would have given them battle, but Mahomet interfered, 
and represented that it was impious to fight within the pre¬ 
cincts of the Caaba. The Caliph, seeing the small force that 
was with Abdallah, would on his part have proceeded to 
violence, v T hen lo, the second troop of hard riders spurred up; 
then the third, and presently all the rest, shouting “Allah 
Achbar,” and “Vengeance for Hosein.” 

The Caliph, taken by surprise, lost all presence of mind. He 
knew the popularity of Mahomet Ibn Ali and his familv, and 
dreaded an insurrection. Abu Abdallah in the moment of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


459 


triumph would have put him to death, but his hand was 
stayed by the pious and humane Mahomet. The matter was 
peaceably adjusted. The Caliph was left unmolested; Ma¬ 
homet distributed among his friends and adherents a great 
sum of money, which had been sent to him by A1 Moktar, and 
then with his family departed in safety from Mecca. 

A1 Moktar had now to look to his safety at home; his old 
enemy Obeid’allah, former emir of Cufa, was pressing forward 
at the head of an army of the Caliph Abd’almalec, to recover 
that city, holding out to his troops a promise of three days’ 
sack and pillage. A1 Moktar called on the inhabitants to take 
arms against their former tyrant and the murderer of Hosein. 
A body of troops sallied forth headed by Ibrahim, the son of 
Alashtar. To give a mysterious sanctity to the expedition, A1 
Moktar caused a kind of throne covered with a veil to be 
placed on a mule, and led forth with the army; to be to them 
what the ark was to the children of Israel, a sacred safeguard. 
On going into battle, the following prayer was to be offered up 
at it: “Oh God! keep us in obedience to thee, and help us in 
our need. ” To which all the people were to respond, ‘ ‘ Amen !’* 

The army of Ibrahim encountered the host of Obeid’allah on 
the plains, at some distance from Cufa. They rushed forward 
with a holy enthusiasm inspired by the presence of their ark: 
“Vengeance for Hosein!” was their cry, and it smote upon the 
heart of Obeid’allah. The battle was fierce and bloody; the 
Syrian force, though greatly superior, was completely routed; 
Obeid’allah was killed, fighting with desperate valor, and more 
of his soldiers were drowned in the flight than were slaughtered 
in the field. This signal victory was attributed, in a great 
measure, to the presence of the ark or veiled throne, which 
thenceforward was regarded almost with idolatry. 

Ibrahim caused the body of Obeid’allah to be burned to 
ashes, and sent his head to A1 Moktar. The gloomy heart of 
the avenger throbbed with exultation as he beheld this relic of 
the man who had oppressed, insulted, and mutilated him; he 
recollected the blow over the face which had deprived him of 
an eye, and smote the gory head of Obeid’allah, even as he had 
been smitten. 

Thus, says the royal and pious historian Abulfeda, did Allah 
make use of the deadly hate of A1 Moktar to punish Obeid’¬ 
allah, the son of Ziyad, for the martyrdom of Hosein. 

The triumph of A1 Moktar was not of long duration. He 
ruled over a fickle people, and he ruled them with a rod of 


460 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


iron. He persecuted all who were not, or whom he chose to 
consider as not, of the Hosein party, and he is charged with 
fomenting an insurrection of the slaves against the chief men 
of the city of Cufa. A combination was at length formed 
against him, and an invitation was sent to Musab Ibn Zobeir, 
who had been appointed emir of Bassora, by his brother, the 
Caliph Abdallah. 

The invitation was borne by one Shebet, an enthusiast who 
made his entrance into Bassora on a mule with cropt ears and 
tail, his clothes rent, exclaiming with a loud voice, “Ya, 
gautha! Ya gautha! Help! help!” He delivered his message 
in a style suited to his garb, but accompanied it by letters from 
the chief men of Cufa, which stated their grievances in a more 
rational manner. Musab wrote instantly to A1 Mohalleb, the 
emir of Persia, one of the ablest generals of the tune, to come 
to his aid with men and money; and on his arrival, joined 
forces with him to attack the Avenger in his seat of power. 

A1 Moktar did not wait t6 be besieged. He took the field 
with his accustomed daring, and gave battle beneath the walls 
of his capital. It was a bloody fight; the presence of the mys¬ 
terious throne had its effect upon the superstitious minds of 
the Cufians, but A1 Moktar had become hateful from his 
tyranny, and many of the first people were disaffected to him. 
His army was routed; he retreated into the royal citadel of 
Cufa, and defended it bravely and skilfully, until he received 
a mortal wound. Their chief being killed, the garrison sur¬ 
rendered at discretion, and Musab put every man to the sword, 
to the number of seven thousand. 

Thus fell A1 Moktar Ibn Abu Obeidah, in his sixty-seventh 
year, after having defeated the ablest generals of three Ca¬ 
liphs, and by the sole power of his sword made hinlself the 
independent ruler of all Babylonia. He is said never to have 
pardoned an enemy, to have persecuted with inveterate hate 
all who were hostile to the family of Ali, and in vengeance of 
the massacre of Hosein to have shed the blood of nearly fifty 
thousand men, exclusive of those who were slain in battle. 
Well did he merit the title of the Avenger. 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS. 


461 


CHAPTER LI. 

MTJSAB IBN ZOBEIR TAKES POSSESSION OF BABYLONIA— USURPA¬ 
TION OF AMRU IBN SAAD; HIS DEATH—EXPEDITION OF ABD’¬ 
ALMALEC AGAINST MUSAB—THE RESULT—OMENS; THEIR EFFECT 
UPON ABD’ALMALEC—EXPLOITS OF AL MOHALLEB. 

The death of A1 Moktar threw the province of Babylonia, 
with its strong capital, Cufa, into the hands of Musab Ibn 
Zobeir, brother to the Caliph Abdallah. Musab was well 
calculated to win the favor of the people. He was in the flower 
of his days, being but thirty-six years of age, comely in person, 
engaging in manners, generous in spirit, and of consummate 
bravery, though not much versed in warfare. He had been 
an intimate friend of Abd’almalec before the latter was made 
Caliph, but he was brother to the rival Caliph, and connected 
by marriage with families in deadly opposition to the house of 
Ommiah. Abd’almalec, therefore, regarded him as a formi¬ 
dable foe, and, warned by the disasters of his army under 
Obeid’allah, resolved now to set out at the head of a second 
expedition in person, designed for the invasion of Babylonia. 

In setting forth on this enterprise he confided the govern¬ 
ment of Damascus to his cousin, Amru Ibn Saad; he did this 
in consideration of the military skill of Amru, though secretly 
there was a long nourished hate between them. The origin of 
this hatred shows the simplicity of Saracen manners in those 
days. When boys, Abd’almalec and Amru were often under 
the care of an old beldame of their family, who used to prepare 
their meals, and produce quarrels between them in the allot¬ 
ment of their portions. These childish disputes became fierce 
quarrels and broils as they grew up tog? 4 ; 1 ^ and were rivals 
in their youthful games and exercises. In manhood they 
ripened into deadly jealousy and envy, as they became con¬ 
quering generals; but the elevation of Abd’almalec to the Ca- 
liphat sank deep into the heart of Amru, as a flagrant wrong; 
the succession having been promised to him by his uncle, the 
late Caliph Merwan, as a reward for having subjugated Egypt. 
As soon, therefore, as Abd’almalec had departed from Damas¬ 
cus, Amru, not content with holding the government of the 
city, aspired to the sovereignty of Syria, as his rightful do¬ 
minion. 


462 


MAHOMET AND JUS SUCCESSORS . 


Abd’almalec heard of the usurpation while on the march, 
returned rapidly in his steps, and a bloody conflict ensued 
between the forces of the rival cousins in the streets of Damas¬ 
cus. The women rushed between them; held up their children 
and implored the combatants to desist from this unnatural 
warfare. Amru laid down his arms, and articles of reconcilia¬ 
tion were drawn up and signed by the cousins. 

Abd’almalec proved faithless to his engagements. Getting 
Amru into his power by an artful stratagem, he struck off his 
head, put to death the principal persons who had supported 
him in.his usurpation, and banished his family. As the exiles 
were about to depart, he demanded of the widow of Amru the 
written articles of pacification which he had exchanged with 
her husband. She replied that she had folded them up in his 
winding-sheet, to be at hand at the final day of judgment. 

Abd’almalec now resumed his march for Babylonia. He 
had sent agents before him to tamper with the fidelity of the 
principal persons. One of these, Ibrahim Ibn Alashtar, he 
had offered to make emir if he would serve his cause. Ibra¬ 
him, who was of incorruptible integrity, showed the letter to 
Musab, warned him that similar attempts must have been 
made to sap the fidelity of other persons of importance, and 
advised him to use the scimetar freely, wherever he suspected 
disaffection; but Musab was too just and merciful to act thus 
upon mere suspicion. The event showed that Ibrahim under¬ 
stood the fickle and perfidious nature of the people of Irak. 

A battle took place on the margin of the desert not far from 
Palmyra. It commenced with a gallant charge of cavalry, 
headed by Ibrahim Ibn Alashtar, which broke the ranks of the 
Syrians and made great havoc. Abd’almalec came up with a 
reinforcement, and rallied his scattered troops. In making a 
second charge, however, Ibrahim was slain, and now the per¬ 
fidy of the Cufians became apparent. Musab’s general of 
horse wheeled round and spurred ignominiously from the 
field; others of the leaders refused to advance. Musab called 
loudly for Ibrahim; but seeing his lifeless body on the ground, 
“Alas!” he exclaimed, “there is no Ibrahim for me this 
day.” 

Turning to his son Isa, a mere stripling, yet who had fought 
with manly valor by his side, “Fly, my son,” cried he; “fly 
to thy uncle Abdallah at Mecca; tell him of my fate, and of 
the perfidy of the men of Irak.” Isa, who inherited the un¬ 
daunted spirit of the family of Zobeir, refused to leave his 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


468 


father. “ Let us retreat,” said he, “ to Bassora, where you will 
still find friends, and may thence make good your return to 
Mecca.” “No, my son!” replied Musab, “never shall it be 
said among the men of Koreish, that I fled the field of battle, 
or entered the temple of Mecca a vanquished general!’ 

During an interval of the battle, Abd’almalec sent Musab an 
offer of his life. His reply was, he had come to conquer or to 
die. The conflict was soon at an end. The troops who had 
adhered to Musab were cut to pieces, his son Isa was slain by 
his side, and he himself, after being repeatedly wounded with 
arrows, was stabbed to the heart, and his head struck off. 

When Abd’almalec entered Cufa in triumph, the fickle in¬ 
habitants thronged to welcome him and take the oath of alle¬ 
giance, and he found himself in quiet possession of both Baby¬ 
lonia and Persian Irak. He distributed great sums of money 
to win the light affections of the populace, and gave a sump¬ 
tuous banquet in the citadel to which all were welcome. 

In the height of the banquet, when all was revelry, a thought 
passed through the mind of the Caliph, as to the transient 
duration of all human grandeur. ‘ 4 Alas!” he ejaculated, 4 4 how 
sweetly we might live, if a shadow would but last!” The same 
vein of melancholy continued when the banquet was over, 
and he walked about the castle with an old gray-headed in¬ 
habitant, listening to his account of its antiquities and tradi¬ 
tions. Every reply of the old man to his questions about 
things or persons began with the words, 4 4 This was—That was 
—He was.” 

“Alas!” sighed the Caliph, repeating a verse from an Ara¬ 
bian poet; “everything new soon runneth to decay, and of 
every one that is, it is soon said, He was!” 

While thus conversing, the head of Musab was brought to 
him, and he ordered a thousand dinars of gold to the soldier 
who brought it, but he refused the reward. 44 1 slew him,” he 
said, “not for money, but to avenge a private wrong.” The 
old chronicler of the castle now broke forth on the wonderful 
succession of events. 44 1 am fourscore and ten years old,” 
said he, “and have outlived many generations. In this very 
castle I have seen the head of Hosein presented to Obeid’allah, 
the son of Ziyad; then the head of Obeid’allah to A1 Moktar; 
then the head of A1 Moktar to Musab, and now that of Musab 
to yourself.” The Caliph«was superstitious, and the words of 
the old man sounded ominously as the presage of a brief career 
to himself. He determined that his own head should not 


464 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


meet with similar fate within that castle’s walls, and gave 
orders to raze the noble citadel of Cufa to the foundation. 

Abd’almalec now appointed his brother Besher Ibn Merwan 
to the government of Babylonia; and as he was extremely 
young, he gave him, as chief counsellor, or vizier, a veteran 
named Musa Ibn Nosseyr, who had long enjoyed the confi¬ 
dence of the family of Merwan, as had his father before him. 
It is said by some that his father Nosseyr was a liberated slave 
of the Caliph’s brother Abd’alaziz, and employed by him in 
high functions. So great was the confidence of the Caliph in 
Musa that he intrusted him with all the military rolls of the 
province, and signified to him that in future the responsibility 
would rest upon him. On taking possession of his government, 
Besher delivered his seal of office into the hands of Musa, and 
intrusted him with the entire management of affairs. This 
Musa, it will be found, rose afterward to great renown. 

The Caliph also appointed Khaled Ibn Abdallah to the com¬ 
mand at Bassora, after which he returned to his capital of 
Damascus. The province of Babylonia, however, was not 
destined to remain long at peace. There was at this time a 
powerful Moslem sect in Persia, a branch of the Motalazites, 
called Azarakites from the name of their founder Ibn A1 
Azarak, but known also by the name of Separatists. They 
were enemies' of all regular government, and fomenters of se¬ 
dition and rebellion. During the sway of the unfortunate 
Musab they had given him great trouble by insurrections in 
various parts of the country, accompanied by atrocious cruel¬ 
ties. They had been kept in check, however, by Mohalleb, the 
lieutenant of Musab and one of the ablest generals of the age, 
who was incessantly on the alert at the head of the army, and 
never allowed their insurrections to come to any head. 

Mohalleb was on a distant command at the time of the inva¬ 
sion and conquest. As soon as he heard of the defeat and 
death of Musab, and the change in the government of Irak, he 
hastened to Bassora to acknowledge allegiance to Abd’almalec. 
Khaled accepted his services, in the name of the Caliph, but 
instead of returning him to the post he had so well sustained 
at the head of the armv, appointed him supervisor or collector 
of tributes, and gave the command of the forces to his own 
brother, named Abd’alaziz. The change was unfortunate. The 
Azarakites had already taken breqjh, and acquired strength 
during the temporary absence of their old adversary, Mohal¬ 
leb ; but as soon as they heard he was no longer in command, 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 465 

they collected all their forces and made a rapid inroad into 
Irak. 

Abd’alaziz advanced to meet them; but he was new to his 
own troops, being a native of Mecca, and he knew little of the 
character of the enemy. He was entirely routed, and his wife, 
a woman of great beauty, taken captive. A violent dispute 
arose among the captors as to the ransom of their prize, some 
valuing her at one hundred thousand dinars; until a furious 
zealot, indignant that her beauty should cause dissension 
among them, struck off her head. 

The Caliph Abd’almalec was deeply grieved when he heard 
of this defeat, and wrote to Khaled, emir of Bassora, reproving 
him for having taken the command of the army from Mohal- 
leb, a man of penetrating judgment, and hardened in war, and 
given it to Abd’alaziz, “a mere Arab of Mecca.” He ordered 
him, therefore, to replace Mohalleb forthwith, and wrote also 
to his brother Besher, emir of Babylonia, to send the general 
reinforcements. 

Once more Mohalleb proved his generalship by defeating the 
Azrakites in a signal and bloody battle near the city of Ahwaz; 
nor did he suffer them to rally, but pursued them over the bor¬ 
ders and into the heart of the mountains, until his troops lost 
almost all their horses, and returned crowned with victory, but 
wayworn and almost famished. 

The effect of all these internal wars was to diminish, for a 
time, the external terror of the Moslem name. The Greek em¬ 
peror, during the recent troubles, had made successful incur¬ 
sions into Syria; and Abd’almalec, finding enemies enough 
among those of his own faith, had been fain to purchase a 
humiliating truce of the Christian potentate by an additional 
yearly tribute of fifty thousand ducats. 


CHAPTER LIX. 

abd’almalec makes war upon his RIVAL CALIPH IN MECCA— 
SIEGE OF THE SACRED CITY—DEATH OF ABDALLAH—DEMOLITION 
AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CAABA. 

Abd’almAlec, by his recent victories, had made himself 
sovereign of all the eastern part of the Moslem dominions; he 
had protected '“himself also from the Christian emperor by a 



466 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


disgraceful augmentation of tribute; he now determined to 
carry a war against his rival Abdallah, to the very gates of 
Mecca, and make himself sovereign of an undivided empire. 

The general chosen for this important enterprise was A1 
Hejagi (or Hedjadgi) Ibn Yusef, who rose to renown as one of 
the ablest and most eloquent men of that era. He set off from 
Damascus with but two thousand men, but was joined by 
Taric Ibn Amar with five thousand more. Abd’almalec had 
made proclamations beforehand, promising protection and 
favor to such of the adherents of Abdallah as should come 
unto his allegiance, and he trusted that many of the inhabit¬ 
ants of Mecca would desert to the standard of A1 Hejagi. 

Abdallah sent forth troops of horse to waylay and check the 
advance of the army, but they were easily repulsed, and A1 
Hejagi arrived without much difficulty before the sacred city. 
Before proceeding to hostilities he discharged arrows over the 
walls, carrying letters, in which the inhabitants were assured 
that he came merely to release them from the tyranny of 
Abdallah, and were invited to accept the most favorable 
terms, and abandon a man who would fain die with the title 
of Caliph, though the ruins of Mecca should be his sepulchre. 

The city was now assailed with battering-rams and catapul- 
tas; breaches were made in the walls; the houses within were 
shattered by great stones, or set on fire by flaming balls of 
pitch and naphtha. 

A violent storm of thunder aiid lightning killed several of 
the besiegers, and brought them to a pause. 4 ‘ Allah is wreak¬ 
ing his anger upon us,” said they, “for assailing his holy city.” 
A1 Hejagi rebuked their superstitious fears and compelled 
them to renew the attack, setting them an example by dis¬ 
charging a stone with his own hands. 

On the following day there was another storm, which did 
most injury to the garrison. “ You perceive,” said AI Hejagi, 
4 ‘the thunder strikes your enemies as well as yourselves.” 

The besieged held out valiantly, and repulsed every assault. 
Abdallah, though now aged and infirm, proved himself a 
worthy son of Zobeir. During the early part of the siege he 
resided chiefly in the Caaba; that sacred edifice, therefore, 
became an object of attack; a part of it was battered down 
by stones, and it was set on fire repeatedly by the balls of 
naphtha. He therefore abandoned it, and retired to his own 
dwelling. He was sustained throughout all this time of peril 
by the presence and counsels of his mother*a woman of 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


467 


masculine spirit and unfailing energy, though ninety years of 
age. She was the granddaughter of Abu Beker, and proved 
herself worthy of her descent. She accompanied her son to 
the ramparts, caused refreshments to be distributed among the 
fighting men, was consulted in every emergency and present in 
every danger. 

The siege continued with unremitting strictness; many of 
Abdallah’s most devoted friends were killed; others became 
disheartened: nearly ten thousand of the inhabitants deserted 
to the enemy; even two of the Caliph’s sons, Hamza and 
Koheib, forsook him, and made terms for themselves with the 
besiegers. 

In this forlorn state, his means of defence almost exhausted, 
and those who ought to have been most faithful deserting him, 
Abdallah was tempted by an offer of his own terms on con¬ 
dition of surrender. 

He turned to his aged mother for advice. “ Judge for your¬ 
self, my son,” said the resolute descendant of Abu Beker. “If 
you feel that your cause is just, persevere. Your father Zo- 
beir died for it, as did many of your friends. Do not bend 
your neck to the scorn of the haughty race of Ommiah. How 
much better an honorable death than a dishonored life for the 
brief term you have yet to live. ” 

The Caliph kissed her venerable forehead. “Thy thoughts 
are my own,” said he, “nor has any other motive than zeal 
for God induced me thus far to persevere. From this moment, 
consider thy son as dead, and refrain from immoderate lamen¬ 
tation.” “My trust is in God,” replied she, “and I shall have 
comfort in thee, my son, whether I go before or follow thee.” 

As she took a parting embrace, she felt a coat of mail under 
the outer garments of Abdallah, and told him to put it off, as 
unsuited to a martyr prepared to die. “I have worn it,” 
replied he, “that I might be the better able to defend thee, my 
mother.” He added that he had little fear of death, but a 
horror of the insults and exposures to which his body might 
be subjected after death. 

“A sheep once killed, my son, feels not the flaying.” With 
these words she gave him, to rouse his spirits, a cordial 
draught in which was a strong infusion of musk, and Abdallah 
went forth a self-devoted martyr. 

This last sally of the veteran Caliph struck terror and 
astonishment into the enemy. At the head of a handful of 
troops he repulsed them from the breach, drove them into the 


468 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


ditch, and slew an incredible number with his own hand; 
others, however, thronged up in their place; he fought until his 
followers were slain, his arrows expended, and he had no 
weapon but sword and lance. He now retreated, step by step, 
with his face to the foe, disputing every inch of ground, until 
he arrived in a narrow place where he could only be assailed 
in front. Here he made his last stand. His opponents, not 
daring to come within reach of his weapons, assailed him from 
a distance with darts and arrows, and when these missiles 
were expended, with bricks and tiles and stones. A blow 
on the head from a stone made him totter, and the blood 
streamed down his face and beard. His assailants gave a 
shout; but he recovered himself and uttered a verse of a poet, 
“The blood of our wounds falls on our instep, not on our 
heels,” implying that he had not turned his back upon the foe. 
At length he sank under repeated wounds and bruises, and the 
enemy closing upon him cut off his head. Thus died Abdallah 
the son of Zobeir, in the seventy-third year of the Hegira, and 
the seventy-second year of his own age, after a stormy and 
disastrous reign of nine years. 

Taric Ibn Amar, struck Avith admiration of his persevering 
valor, exclaimed, “Never did woman bear a braver son!” 
“How is this,” cried A1 Hejagi; “do you speak thus of an 
enemy of the Commander of the Faithful ?” But Abd’almalec, 
when the speech was reported to him, concurred in the praise 
of his fallen rival. “By Allah!” exclaimed he, “AA T hat Taric 
hath spoken is the truth.” When the tidings of Abdallah’s 
death were brought to his aged mother, she experienced a 
revulsion of nature which she had not knoAvn for fifty years, 
and died of hemorrhage. 

Abdallah was said to unite the courage of the lion Avith the 
craftiness of the fox. He was free from any glaring vice, but 
reputed to be sordidly covetous and miserly, insomuch that he 
Avore the same garment for several years.' It was a saying in 
Arabia that he Avas the first example of a man being at the 
same time brave and covetous; but the spoils of foreign con¬ 
quest Avere fast corrupting the chivalrous spirit of the Arab 
conquerors. He was equally renoAvned for piety, being ac¬ 
cording to tradition so fixed and immovable in prayer that a 
pigeon once perched upon his head mistaking him for a statue. 

With the death of Abdallah ended the rival Caliphat, and 
the conquering general received the oaths of allegiance of the 
&mbs for Abd’almalec. His conduct, however, toward the 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


469 


people of Mecca and Medina was as cruel and oppressive as his 
military operations had been brilliant. He inflicted severe 
punishments for trivial offences, sometimes on mere suspicion; 
and marked many with stamps of lead upon the neck, to dis¬ 
grace them in the public eye. His most popular act was the 
reconstruction of the dilapidated Caaba on the original form 
which it had borne before the era of the prophet. 

For a time the people of Mecca and Medina groaned under 
his tyranny, and looked back with repining to the gentler 
sway of Abdallah; and it was a cause of general joy through¬ 
out those cities when the following circumstances caused him 
to be removed from their government and promoted to a 
distant command. 

Though the death of Abdallah had rendered Abd’almalec, 
sole sovereign of the Moslem empire, the emir of Khorassan, 
Abdallah Ibn Hazem, who had been appointed by his rival, 
hesitated to give in his allegiance. His province, so distant 
and great in extent, might make him a dangerous rebel; 
Abd’almalec, therefore, sent a messenger, claiming his oath 
of fealty, and proffering him in reward the government of 
- Khorassan for seven years, with the enjoyment of all its 
revenues; at the same time he sent him the head of the 
deceased Caliph, to intimate the fate he might expect should 
he prove refractory. 

The emir, instead of being intimidated, was filled with 
horror, and swore never to acknowledge Abd’almalec as Com¬ 
mander of the Faithful. He reverently washed and embalmed 
the head, folded it in fine linen, prayed over it, and sent it to 
the family of the deceased Caliph at Medina. Then summon¬ 
ing the messenger, he made him eat the epistle of Abd’almalec 
in his presence, and dismissed him with the assurance that his 
sacred character of herald alone saved his head. 

It was to go against this refractory but high-minded emir 
that A1 Hejagi was called off from his command in Arabia. 
He entered Khorassan with a powerful army, defeated the 
emir in repeated battles, and at length slew hi m and reduced 
the province to obedience. 

The vigor, activity, and indomitable courage displayed by 
A1 Hejagi in these various services pointed him out as the 
very man to take charge of the government of Babylonia, or 
Irak, recently vacated by the death of the Caliph’s brother 
Besher; and he was accordingly sent to break that refractory 
province into more thorough obedience. 


470 


MAHOMET AND 1IIS SUCCESSORS. 


The province of Babylonia, though formerly a part of tho 
Persian empire, had never been really Persian in -character. 
Governed by viceroys, it had partaken of the alien feeling of a 
colony; forming a frontier between Persia and Arabia, and its 
population made up from both countries, it was deficient in 
the virtues of either. The inhabitants had neither the sim¬ 
plicity and loyalty of the Arabs of the desert, nor the refine¬ 
ment and cultivation of the Persians of the cities. Restless, 
turbulent, factious, they were ever ready to conspire against 
their rulers, to desert old faiths, and to adopt new sects and 
heresies. Before the conquest by the Moslems, when Irak was 
governed by a Persian satrap, and Syria by an imperial pre¬ 
fect, a spirit of rivalry and hostility existed between these 
frontier provinces; the same had revived during the division 
of the Caliphat; and while Syria was zealous in its devotion to 
the house of Ommiah, Irak had espoused the cause of Ali. 
Even since the reunion and integrity of the Caliphat, it still 
remained a restless, unsteady part of the Moslem empire; the 
embers of old seditions still lurked in its bosom, ready at any 
moment once more to burst forth into flame. We shall see 
how A1 Hejagi fared in his government of that most com¬ 
bustible province. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF AL HEJAGI AS EMIR OF BABYLONIA. 

Al Hejagi, aware of the nature of the people over whom he 
was to rule, took possession of his government in military 
style. Riding into Cufa at the head of four thousand horse, 
he spurred on to the mosque, alighted at the portal, and as¬ 
cending the pulpit delivered an harangue to the multitude, 
that let them know the rigorous rule they were to expect. He 
had come, he said, “to make the wicked man bear his own 
burden, and wear his own shoeand, as he looked round on 
the densely-crowded assemblage, he intimated he saw before 
him turbaned heads ripe for mowing, and beards which re¬ 
quired to be moistened with blood. 

His sermon was carried out in practice; he ruled with a rigor¬ 
ous hand, swearing he would execute justice in a style that 
should put to shame all who had preceded, and serve as an 
example to all who might follow him. He was especially 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


471 


severe, and even cruel, toward all who had been in any way 
implicated ;n the assassination of the Caliph Othman. One 
person, against whom he came orepare^l to exercise the utmost 
severity, was the veteran Musa Ibn Nosseyr, who had offici¬ 
ated as prime minister to the deceased emir Basher. He had 
been accused of appropriating and squandering the taxes col¬ 
lected in the province, and the Caliph had lent a too ready ear 
to the accusation. Fortunately, the following letter, from a 
friend in Damascus, apprised Musa in time of his danger. 

“Thy deposition is signed; orders have been dispatched to 
A1 Hejagi to seize on thy person and inflict on thee the most 
severe punishment; so away! away !• thy safety depends on 
the fleetness of thy horse. If thou succeed in placing thyself 
under the protection of Abd’alaziz Ibn Merwan, all will go well 
with thee.” 

Musa lost no time, but mounted his steed and fled to Damas¬ 
cus, where Abd alaziz was then sojourning, having arrived 
with the tribute of Egypt. Abd’alaziz received with protecting 
kindness the veteran adherent of the family, and accompanied 
him before the Caliph. “How darest thou show thy beard 
here?” exclaimed Abd’almalec. “Why should I hide it?” re¬ 
plied the veteran; ‘ ‘ what have I done to offend the Comman¬ 
der of the Faithful?” “Thou hast disobeyed my orders, and 
squandered my treasures.” “I did no such thing,” replied 
Musa, firmly; “I have always acted like a faithful subject; 
my intentions have been pure; my actions true.” “By Allah,” 
cried the Caliph, “ thou shalt make thy defalcation good fifty 
times over.” The veteran was about to make an angry reply, 
but at a sign from Abd’alaziz he checked himself, and bowing 
his head, “ Thy will be done,” said he, “ oh Commander of the 
Faithful.” He was fined fifty thousand dinars of gold; which, 
however, Abd’alaziz enabled him to pay; and, on his return to 
his government in Egypt, took his old favorite with him. How 
he further indemnified Musa for his maltreatment will be 
shown hereafter. 

To resume the affairs of A1 Hejagi in Irak. Having exer¬ 
cised the rod of government in Cufa, he proceeded to Bassora, 
where he was equally sharp with his tongue and heavy with 
his hand. The consequence was, as usual, an insurrection. 
This suited his humor. He was promptly in the field; defeated 
the rebels in a pitched battle; sent the heads of eighteen of 
their leaders to the Caliph, and then returned to the adminis¬ 
tration of affairs at Bassora. He afterward sent two of his 


472 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


lieutenants to suppress a new movement among the Azarakite 
sectaries, who were defeated and driven out of the province. 

In the 76th year of, the Hegira a conspiracy was formed 
against the life of Abd’almalec, by two Karigite fanatics, 
named 13hebib Ibn Zeid and Saleh Ibn Mari. Their conspiracy 
was discovered and defeated, but they made their escape and 
repaired to the town of Daras, in Mesopotamia, where they man 
aged to get together adherents to the number of one hundred 
and twenty men. Saleh was smooth-tongued and seductive, 
having a melodious voice and a great command of figurative 
language. He completely fascinated and bewildered his com¬ 
panion Shebib, and their infatuated followers, mingling his 
inflammatory harangues with pious precepts and expositions 
of the Koran. In the end he was hailed Commander of the 
Faithful by the motley crew, and gravely accepted the office. 
His men were all armed, but most of them were on foot; he 
therefore led them to a neighboring village, where they seized 
upon the best horses in the name of Allah and the prophet, to 
whom they referred the owners for payment. 

Mahomet, brother of Abd’almalec, who was at that time 
emir of Mesopotamia, was moved to laughter when he heard 
of this new Caliph and his handful of rabble followers, and 
ordered Adi, one of his officers, to take five hundred men and 
sweep them from the province. 

Adi shook his head doubtfully. “One madman,” said he, 
“is more dangerous than five soldiers in their senses.” 

“Take one thousand then,” said the emir; and with that 
number, well armed and mounted, Adi set out in quest of the 
fanatics. He found them and their pseudo Caliph living in 
free quarters on the fat of the land, and daily receiving re¬ 
cruits in straggling parties of two, and three, and four at a 
time, armed with such weapons as they could catch up in their 
haste. On the approach of Adi they prepared for battle, hav¬ 
ing full confidence that a legion of angels would fight on their 
side. 

Adi held a parley, and endeavored to convince them of the 
absurdity of their proceedings, or to persuade them to carry 
their marauding enterprises elsewhere; but Saleh, assuming 
the tone of Caliph as well as sectarian, admonished Adi and 
his men to conform to his doctrines, and come into his allegi¬ 
ance. The conference ended while it was yet the morning 
hour. Adi still forbore to attack such a handful of misguided 
men, and paid dearly for his forbearance. At noontide, when 


MAROMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


473 


be and bis men were engaged in the customary prayer, and 
their steeds were feeding, the enthusiast band charged sud¬ 
denly upon them with the cry of Allah Achbar! Adi was 
slain in the onset, amd his body was trampled under foot; his 
troops were slaughtered or dispersed, and his camp and horses, 
with a good supply of arms, became welcome booty to the 
victors. 

The band of sectarians increased in numbers and in daring 
after this signal exploit. A1 Hejagi sent five thousand veteran 
troops against them, under A1 Hareth Alamdani. These came 
by surprise upon the two leaders, Saleh and Shebib, with a 
party of only ninety 'men, at a village on the Tigris not far 
from Mosul, the capital of Mesopotamia. The fanatic chiefs 
attacked the army with a kind of frantic courage, but Saleh, 
the mock Caliph, was instantly killed, with a score of his fol¬ 
lowers. Shebib was struck from his horse, but managed to 
keep together the remnant of his party; made good his retreat 
with them into Montbagi, a dismantled fortress, and swung to 
and secured the ponderous gate. 

The victors kindled a great fire against the gate, and waited 
patiently until it should burn down, considering their prey 
secure. 

As the night advanced, Shebib, who from his desolate re¬ 
treat watched anxiously for some chance of escape, perceived, 
by the light of the fire, that the greater part of the besiegers, 
fatigued by their march, were buried in deep sleep. He now 
exacted from his men an oath of implicit obedience, which 
they took between his hands. He then caused them to steep 
most of their clothing in a tank of water within the castle, 
after which, softly drawing the bolts of the flaming gate, they 
threw it down on the fire kindled against it; flung their we 
garments on the burning bridge thus suddenly formed, and 
rushed forth scimetar in hand. 

Instead of contenting themselves with an escape, the crazy 
zealots charged into the very heart of the sleeping camp and 
wounded the general before an alarm was given. The soldiers 
started awake in the midst of havoc and confusion; supposing 
themselves surprised by a numerous army, they fled in all 
directions, never ceasing their flight until they had taken re¬ 
fuge in Mosul or Jukhi, or some other wailed city. 

Shebib established himself amid the abundance of the de¬ 
serted camp; scarce any of his men had been killed or wounded 
in this midnight slaughter; he considered himself therefore 


474 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


invincible; proclaimed himself Commander of the Faithful, 
and partisans crowded to his standard. Strengthened by num¬ 
bers, he led his fanatie horde against Cufa, and had the address 
and good fortune to make himself master of it, A1 Hejagi, the 
emir, being absent at Bassora. He was soon joined by his wife 
Gazala; established himself as Caliph with some ceremonial, 
and doubtless his vagabond sway was more acceptable to the 
people of Cufa than the iron rule of A1 Hejagi. 

The mock Caliphat, however, was of brief duration. A1 
Hejagi, reinforced by troops from Syria, marched in person 
against Cufa. He was boldly met in the plains near that city 
by Shebib, at the head of four thousand men. The fanatics 
were defeated, and Gazala, the wife of the mock Caliph, who 
had accompanied her husband to the field, was slain. Shebib 
with a remnant of his force cut his way through the Syrian 
army, crossed and recrossed the Tigris, and sought refuge and 
reinforcements in the interior of Persia. He soon returned 
into Irak, with a force inconsiderable in numbers, but formi¬ 
dable for enthusiasm and desperate valor. He was encoun¬ 
tered at the bridge of Dojail al Awaz. Here a sudden and un¬ 
expected end was put to his fanatic career. His horse struck 
his fore feet on some loose stonep on the margin of the bridge, 
and threw his rider into the stream. He rose twice to the sur¬ 
face, and each time uttered a pious ejaculation. “ What God 
decrees is just!” was the first exclamation. “The will of God 
be done!” was the second, and the waters closed over him. 
His followers cried with loud lamentations, “The Commander 
of the Faithful is no more!” and every man betook himself to 
flight. The water was dragged with a net, the body was found 
and decapitated, and the head sent to Al Hejagi, who trans¬ 
mitted it to the Caliph. The heart of this enthusiast was also 
taken out of his breast, and is said to have been as hard as 
stone. He was assuredly a man of extraordinary daring. 

Arabian writers say that the manner of Shebib’s death was 
predicted before his birth. His mother was a beautiful Chris¬ 
tian captive, purchased at a public sale by Yezid Ibii Naim for 
his harem. Just before she gave birth to Shebib, she had a 
dream that a coal of fire proceeded from her, and, after en¬ 
kindling a flame over the firmament, fell into the sea and was 
extinguished. This dream was interpreted that she would 
give birth to a man-child, who would prove a distinguished 
warrior, but would eventually be drowned. So strong was 
her belief in this omen, that when she heard, on one occasion, 


47o 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

of his defeat and of his alleged death on the battle-field, she 
treated the tidings as an idle rumor, saying it was by water 
only her son would die. At the time of Shebib’s death he had 
just passed his fiftieth year. 

The emir A1 Hejagi was destined to have still farther coim 
motions in his turbulent and inconstant province. A violent 
feud existed between him and Abda’lrahman Ibn Mohammed, 
a general subject to his orders. To put an end to it, or to re¬ 
lieve himself from the presence of an enemy, he sent him on 
an expedition to the frontiers against the Turks. Abda’lrah¬ 
man set out on his march, but when fairly in the field, with a 
force at his command, conceived a project either of revenge or 
ambition. 

Addressing his soldiers in a spirited harangue, he told them 
that their numbers were totally inadequate to the enterprise; 
that the object of A1 Hejagi in sending him on such a danger¬ 
ous service with such incompetent means was to effect his de¬ 
feat and ruin, and that they had been sent to be sacrificed with 
him. 

The harangue produced the desired effect. The troops 
vowed devotion to Abda’lrahman and vengeance upon the 
emir. Without giving their passion time to cool, he led 
them back to put their threats in execution. A1 Hejagi 
heard of the treason, and took the field to meet them, but 
probably was not well seconded by the people of Babylonia, 
for he was defeated in a pitched battle. Abda’lrahman then 
marched to the city of Bassora; the inhabitants welcomed him 
as their deliverer from a tyrant, and, captivated by his hu¬ 
mane and engaging manners, hailed him as Caliph. Intoxi¬ 
cated by his success, he gravely assumed the title, and pro¬ 
ceeded toward Cufa. Encountering A1 Hejagi on the way, 
with a hastily levied army, he gave him another signal de¬ 
feat, and then entered Cufa in triumph, amid the shouts of its 
giddy populace, who were delighted with any change that re¬ 
leased them from the yoke of A1 Hejagi. 

Abda’lrahman was now acknowledged Caliph throughout 
the territories bordering on the Euphrates and the Tigris, a 
mighty empire in ancient days, and still important from its 
population, for he soon had on foot an army of one hundred 
thousand men. 

Repeated defeat had but served to rouse the energy of A1 
Hejagi. He raised troops among such of the people of Irak as 
remained faitful to Abd’almalec, received reinforcements from 


476 MAHOMET AND SJS SUCCESSORS, 

tne Caliph, ana by dmt oi indefatigable exertions was again 
enabled to take the field. 

The two generals, animated by deadly hate, encamped their 
armies at places not far apart. Here they remained between 
three and four months, keeping vigilant eye upon each other, 
and engaged in incessant conflicts, though never venturing 
upon a pitched battle. 

The object of A1 Hejagi was to gain an advantage by his 
superior military skill, and he succeeded. By an artful 
manoeuvre he cut off Abda’lrahman, with a body of five 
thousand men, from his main army, compelled him to retreat, 
and drove him to take refuge in a fortified town, where, being 
closely besieged, and having no hope of escape, he threw him¬ 
self headlong from a lofty tower, rather than fall into the 
hands of his cruel enemy. 

Thus terminated the rebellion of this second mock Caliph, 
and A1 Hejagi, to secure the tranquillity of Irak, founded a 
strong city on the Tigris, called A1 Wazab, or the Centre, from 
its lying at equal distance from Cufa, Bassora, Bagdad, and 
Ahwaz, about fifty leagues from each. 

A1 Hejagi, whom we shall have no further occasion to men 
tion, continued emir of Irak until his death, which took place 
under the reign of the/next Caliph, in the ninety-fifth year of 
the Hegira, and the fifty-fourth of his own age. He is said to 
have caused the death of one hundred and twenty thousand 
persons, independent of those who fell in battle, and that, at 
the time of his death, he left fifty thousand confined in different 
prisons. Can we wonder that he was detested as a tyrant? 

In his last illness, say the Arabian historian, he sent for a 
noted astrologer, and asked him whether any great general 
was about to end his days. The learned man consulted the 
stars, and replied, that a great captain named Kotaib, or 
“The Dog,” was at the point of death. “That,” said the 
dying emir, “is the name my mother used to call me when a 
child. ” He inquired of the astrologer if he was assured of his 
prediction. The sage, proud of his art, declared that it was 
infallible. “ Then,” said the emir, “ I will iake you with me, 
that I may have the benefit of your skill in the other world.” 
So saying, he caused his head to be struck off. 

The tyranny of this general was relieved at times by dis¬ 
plays of great magnificence and acts of generosity, if not 
clemency. He spread a thousand tables at a single banquet, 
and bestowed a million dirhems of silver at a single donation. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


477 


On one occasion, an Arab, ignorant of liis person, spoke of 
him, in his presence, as a cruel tyrant. “ Do you know me,” 
said A1 Hejagi, sternly. “I do not,” replied the Arab. “I 
am A1 Hejagi!” “That may be,” replied the Arab, quickly; 
“but do you know me? I am of the family of Zobeir, who 
are fools in the full of the moon; and if you look upon the 
heavens you will see that this is my day.” The emir laughed 
at his ready wit, and dismissed him with a present. 

On another occasion, when separated from his party while 
hunting, he came to a spring where an Arab was feeding his 
camels, and demanded drink. The Arab bade him, rudely, to 
alight and help himself. It was during the rebellion of 
Abda’lrahman. After he had slaked his thirst he demanded of 
the Arab whether he was for the Caliph Abd’almalec. The 
Arab replied “No; for the Caliph had sent the worst man in 
the world to govern the province. ” Just then a bird, passing 
overhead, uttered a croaking note. The Arab turned a quick 
eye upon the emir. “Who art thou?” cried he, with com 
sternation. “ Wherefore the question?” “Because I under¬ 
stand the language of birds, and he says that thou art chief of 
yon horsemen that I see approaching. ” 

The emir smiled, and when his attendants came up, bade 
them to bring the camel-driver with them. On the next day 
he sent for him, had meat set before him, and bade him eat. 
Before he complied, the Arab uttered a grace, “Allah grant 
that the end of this meal be as happy as the beginning.” 

The emir inquired if he recollected their conversation of 
yesterday. “ Perfectly! but I entreat thee to forget it, for it 
was a secret which should be buried in oblivion.” 

“Here are two conditions for thy choice,” said the emir; 
“recant what thou hast said and enter into my service, or 
abide the decision of the Caliph, to whom thy treasonable 
speech shall be repeated.” “ There is a third course,” replied 
the Arab, “ which is better than either. Send me to my own 
home, and let us be strangers to each other as heretofore.” 

The emir was amused by the spirit of the Arab, and dis¬ 
missed him with a thousand dirhems of silver. 

There were no further troubles in Irak during the lifetime of 
A1 Hejagi, and even the fickle, turbulent, and faithless people 
of Cufa became submissive and obedient. Abulfaragius says 
that this general died of eating dirt. It appears that he was 
subject to dyspepsia or indigestion, for which he used to eat 
Terra Lemnia and other medicinal or absorbent earths. 


478 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Whether he fell a victim to the malady or the medicine is not 
clearly manifest. 


CHAPTEE LIV. 

DENUNCIATION OF TRIBUTE TO THE EMPEROR — BATTLES IN, 

NORTHERN AFRICA — THE PROPHET QUEEN CAHINA; HER 

ACHIEVEMENTS AND FATE. 

The seventy-second year of the Hegira saw the Moslem 
dominions at length free from rebellion and civil war, and 
united under one Caliph. Abd’almalec now looked abroad, 
and was anxious to revive the foreign glories of Islam, which 
had declined during the late vicissitudes. His first movement 
was to throw off the galling tribute to the Greek emperor. 
This, under Moawyah I., had originally been three thousand 
dinars of gold, but had been augmented to three hundred and 
sixty-five thousand, being one thousand for every day in the 
Christian year. It was accompanied by three hundred and 
sixty-five female slaves, and three hundred and sixty-five 
Arabian horses of the most generous race. 

Not content with renouncing the payment of tribute, Abd’¬ 
almalec sent Alid, one of his generals, on a ravaging expedition 
into the imperial dominions, availing himself of a disaffection 
evinced to the new emperor Leontius. Alid returned laden 
with spoils. The cities of Lazuca and Baruncium were likewise 
delivered up to the Moslems through the treachery of Sergius, 
a Christian general. 

Abd’almalec next sought to vindicate the glory of the Moslem 
arms along the northern coast of Africa. There, also, the im¬ 
perialists had taken advantage of the troubles of the Caliphat, 
to reverse the former successes of the Moslems, and to 
strengthen themselves along the sea-coast, of which their 
navy aided them to hold possession. Zohair, who had been 
left by Abd’almalec in command of Barca, had fallen into an 
ambush and been slain with many of his men, and the posts 
still held by the Moslems were chiefly in the interior. 

In the seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, therefore, Abd’al¬ 
malec sent Hossan Ibn An-no’man, at the head of forty thou¬ 
sand choice troops, to carry out the scheme of African con¬ 
quest. That general pressed forward at once with his troops 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


479 


against the city of Carthage, which, though declined from its 
ancient might and glory, was still an important seaport, forti¬ 
fied with lofty walls, haughty towers, and powerful bulwarks, 
and had a numerous garrison of Greeks and other Christians. 
Hossan proceeded according to the old Arab mode; beleaguer¬ 
ing it and reducing it by a long siege; he then assailed it by 
storm, scaled its lofty walls with ladders, and made himself 
master of the place. Many of the inhabitants fell by the edge 
of the sword; many escaped by sea to Sicily and Spain. The 
walls were then demolished, the city was given up to be plun¬ 
dered by the soldiery, the meanest of whom was enriched by 
booty. Particular mention is made among the spoils of victory 
of a great number of female captives of rare beauty. 

The triumph of the Moslem host was suddenly interrupted. 
While they were revelling in the ravaged palaces of Carthage, 
a fleet appeared before the port, snapped the strong chain 
which guarded the entrance, and sailed into the harbor. It 
was a combined force of ships and troops from Constantinople 
and Sicily, reinforced by Goths from Spain, all under the com¬ 
mand of the prefect John, a patrician general of great valor 
and experience. 

Hossan*.felt himself unable to cope with such a force; he 
withdrew, however, in good order, and conducted his troops 
laden with spoils to Tripoli and Caerwan, and having strongly 
posted them, he awaited reinforcements from the Caliph. 
These arrived in the course ot time, by sea and land. Hossan 
again took the field, encountered the prefect Jonn, not far 
from Utica, defeated him in a pitched battle, and drove him to 
embark the wrecks of his army and make all sail for Constan¬ 
tinople. 

Carthage was again assailed by the victors, and now its deso¬ 
lation was complete, for the vengeance of the Moslems gave 
that majestic city to the flames. A heap of ruins and the re¬ 
mains of a noble aqueduct are all the relics of a metropolis that 
once valiantly contended for dominion with Borne, the mistress 
of the world. 

The imperial forces were now expelled from the coasts of 
Northern Africa, but the Moslems had not yet achieved the 
conquest of the country. A formidable enemy remained in the 
person of a native and heroic queen, who was revered by her 
subjects as a saint or prophetess. Her real name was Dliabba, 
but she is generally known in history by the surname, given 
to her by the Moslems* of Cahina or the Sorceress. She has 


480 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


occasionally been confounded with her son Aben, or rather Ibn 
Cahina, of whom mention has been made in a previous chapter. 

Under the sacred standard of this prophet queen were com¬ 
bined the Moors of Mauritania and the Berbers of the moun¬ 
tains, and of the plains bordering on the interior deserts. Rov¬ 
ing and independent tribes, which had formerly warred with 
each other, now yielded implicit obedience to one common 
leader, whom they regarded with religious reverence. The 
character of marabout or saint has ever had vast influence 
over the tribes of Africa. Under this heroic woman the com¬ 
bined host had been reduced to some degree of discipline, and 
inspired with patriotic ardor, and were now prepared to make 
a more effective struggle for their native land than they had 
yet done under then* generals. 

After repeated battles, the emir Hossan was compelled to re¬ 
tire with his veteran but diminished army to the frontiers of 
Egypt. The patriot queen was not satisfied with this partial sue 
cess. Calling a council of war of the leaders and principal war¬ 
riors of the different hordes: ‘ ‘ This retreat of the enemy, ” said 
she, ‘ ‘ is but temporary; they will return in greater force. What 
is it that attracts to our land these Arab spoilers ? The wealth 
of our cities, the treasures of silver and gold digged *from the 
bowels of the earth, the fruits of our gardens and orchards, 
the produce of our fields. Let us demolish our cities, return 
these accursed treasures into the earth, fell our fruit trees, lay 
waste our fields, and spread a barrier of desolation between us 
and the country of these robbers!” 

The words of the royal prophetess were received with fanatic 
enthusiasm by her barbarian troops, the greater part of whom, 
collected from the mountains and from distant parts, had little 
share in the property to be sacrificed. Walled towms were 
forthwith dismantled, majestic edifices were tumbled into 
ruins, groves of fruit trees were hewn down, and the whole 
country from Tangier to Tripoli was converted from a populous 
and fertile region into a howling and barren waste. A short 
time was sufficient to effect a desolation which centuries have 
not sufficed to remedy. N 

This sacrificial measure of Queen Cahina, however patriotic 
its intention, was fatal in the end to herself. The inhabitants 
of the cities and the plains, who had beheld their pix^perty laid 
waste by the infuriated zeal of their defenders, hailed the re¬ 
turn of the Moslem invaders as though they had been the 
saviors of the land. 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


481 


‘l - he Moslems, as Cahina predicted, returned with augmented 
forces; but when she took the field to oppose them, the ranks 
of her army were thinned; the enthusiasm which had formerly 
animated them was at an end: they were routed, after a san¬ 
guinary battle, and the heroine fell into the hands of the 
enemy. Those who captured her spared her life, because she 
was a woman and a queen. When brought into the presence 
of Hossan, she maintained her haughty and fierce demeanor..' 
He proposed the usual conditions, of conversion or tribute. 
She refused both with scorn, and fell a victim to her patriotism 
and religious constancy, being beheaded in the presence of the 
emir. 

Hossan Ibn An-no’man now repaired to Damascus, to give 
the Caliph an account of his battles and victories, bearing an 
immense amount of booty, and several signal trophies. The 
most important of the latter was a precious box containing the 
embalmed head of the slaughtered Cahina. He was received 
with great distinction, loaded with honors, and the govern¬ 
ment of Barca was added to his military command. 

This last honor proved fatal to Hossan. Abd’alaziz Ibn Mer- 
wan, the Caliph’s brother, was at that time emir of Egypt, and 
considered the province of Barca a part of the territories under 
his government. He had, accordingly, appointed one of his 
officers to command it as his lieutenant. He was extremely 
displeased and disconcerted, therefore, when he was told that 
Hossan had solicited and obtained the government of that 
province. Sending for the latter, as he passed through Egypt 
on his way to his post, he demanded whether it was true that 
in addition to his African command he was really appointed 
governor of Barca. Being answered in the affirmative, he ap¬ 
peared still to doubt; whereupon Hossan produced the man¬ 
date of the Caliph. Finding it correct, Abd’alaziz urged him 
to resign the office. “Violence only,” said Hossan, “shall 
wrest from me an honor conferred by the Commander of the 
Faithful.” “Then I deprive thee of both governments,” ex¬ 
claimed the emir, in a passion, ‘ ‘ and will appoint a better man 
in thy stead; and my brother will soon perceive the benefit he 
derives from the change.” So saying, he tore the diploma in 
pieces- 

It is added that, not content with depriving Hossan of his 
command, he despoiled him of all his property, and carried his 
persecution so far that the conqueror of Carthage, the slayer 
of the patriot queen, within a brief time after her death, and 


482 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESS OHS. 


almost amid the very scenes of his triumphs, died of a broker 
heart. His cruel treatment of the heroic Cahina reconciles us 
to the injustice wreaked upon himself. 


CHAPTER LV. 

MUSA IBN NOSSEYR MADE EMIR OF NORTHERN AFRICA—HIS CAM 
PAIGNS AGAINST THE BERBERS. 

The general appointed by the Caliph’s brother, Abd’alaziz 
Ibn Her wan, to the command in Northern Africa, was Musa 
Ibn Nosseyr, the same old adherent of the Merwan family that 
had been prime counsellor of the Caliph’s brother Besher, when 
emir of Irak, and had escaped by dint of hoof from the clutches 
of A1 Hejagi, when the latter was about to arrest him on a 
charge of squandering the public funds. Abd’alaziz, it will be 
remembered, assisted him to pay the fifty thousand dinars oi 
gold, in which he was mulcted by the Caliph, and took him 
with him to Egypt; and it may have been with some view to 
self-reimbursement that the Egyptian emir now took the some¬ 
what bold step of giving him the place assigned to Hossan by 
Abd’almalac. 

At the time of his appointment Musa was sixty years of age. 
He was still active and vigorous, of noble presence, and con¬ 
cealed his age by tinging his hair and beard with henna. He 
had three brave sons who aided him in his campaigns, and in 
whom he took great pride. The eldest he had named Abd’al¬ 
aziz, after his patron; he was brave and magnanimous, in the 
freshness of his youth, and his father’s right hand in all his 
enterprises. Another of his sons he had called Merwan, the 
family name of Abd’alaziz and the Caliph. 

Musa joined the army at its African encampment, and ad¬ 
dressed his troops in frank and simple language. “I am a 
plain soldier like yourselves,” said he; “wh-never I act well, 
thank God, and endeavor to imitate me. When I do wrong, 
reprove me, that I may amend; for we are all sinners and 
liable to err. If any one has at any time a complaint to make, 
let him state it frankly, and it shall be attended to. I have 
orders from the emir Abd’alaziz (to whom God be bountiful!) 
to pay you three times the amount of your arrears. Take it, 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


483 


and make good use of it.” It is needless to say that the ad¬ 
dress, especially the last part, was received with acclamations. 

While Musa was making his harangue, a sparrow fluttered 
into his bosom. Interpreting it as a good omen, he called for 
a knife, cut off the bird’s head, besmeared the bosom of his 
vest with the blood, and scattering the feathers in the air 
above his head: “Victory! Victory!” he cried, “by the master 
of the Caaba, victory is ours!” 

It is evident that Musa understood the character and Jfoibles 
of his troops; he soon won their favor by his munificence, and 
still more by his affability; always accosting them with kind 
words and cheerful looks; carefully avoiding the error of those 
reserved commanders, shut up in the fancied dignity of sta¬ 
tion, who looked, he said, “ as if God had tied a knot in their 
throats, so that.they could not utter a word.” 

“ A commander,” he used to say, “ ought to consult wise and 
experienced men in every undertaking; but when he has made 
up his mind, he should be firm and steady of purpose. He 
should be brave, adventurous, at times even rash, confiding in 
his good fortune, and endeavoring to do more than is expected 
of him. He should be doubly cautious after victory, doubly 
brave after defeat.” 

Musa found a part of Eastern Africa,* forming the present 
states of Tunis and Algiers, in complete confusion and insur¬ 
rection. A Berber chief, Warkattaf by name, scoured night 
and day the land between Zaghwan and Caerwan. The Ber¬ 
bers had this advantage: if routed in the plains they took 
refuge in the mountains, which ran parallel to the coast, form¬ 
ing part of the great chain of Atlas; in the fastness of these 
mountains they felt themselves secure; but should they be 
driven out of these they could plunge into the boundless des¬ 
erts of the interior, and bid defiance to pursuit. 

The energy of Musa rose with the difficulty of his enterprise, 
i “ Take courage,” would he say to his troops. “ God is on our 
side, and will enable us to cope with our enemies, however 
strong their holds. By Allah! I’ll carry the war into yon 
haughty mountains, nor cease until we have seized upon their 
passes, surmounted their summits, and made ourselves mas¬ 
ters of the country beyond.” 

His words were not an empty threat. Having vanquished 


* Northern Africa, extending from Egypt to the extremity of Mauritania, was 
subdivided into Eastern and Western Africa. 




484 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


the Berbers in the plains, he sent his sons Abd’alaziz and Mer- 
wan with troops in different directions, who attacked the 
enemy in their mountain-holds, and drove them beyond to 
the borders of the Southern desert. Warkattaf was slain with 
many of his warriors, and Musa had the gratification of seeing 
his sons return triumphant from their different expeditions, 
bringing to the camp thousands of captives and immense 
booty. Indeed the number of prisoners of both sexes, taken in 
these campaigns, is said to have amounted to three hundred 
thousand, of whom one fifth, or sixty thousand, formed the 
Caliph’s share. 

Musa hastened to write an account of his victories to his 
patron Abd’alaziz Ibn Merwan, and as he knew covetousness 
to be the prime failing of the emir, he sent him, at the same 
time, a great share of the spoils, with choice horses and female 
slaves of surpassing beauty. 

The letter and the present came most opportunely. Abd’ala¬ 
ziz had just received a letter from his brother, the Caliph, re¬ 
buking him for having deposed Hossan, a brave, experienced 
and fortunate officer, and given his office to Musa, a man who 
had formerly incurred the displeasure of the government; and 
he was ordered forthwith to restore Hossan to his command. 

In reply, Abd’alaziz transmitted the hews of the African 
victories. “ I have just received from Musa,” writes he, “ the 
letter which I enclose, that thou mayest peruse it, and give 
thanks to God. ” 

Other tidings came to the same purport,.accompanied by a 
great amount of booty. The Caliph’s feelings toward Musa 
immediately changed. He at once saw his fitness for the post 
he occupied, and confirmed the appointment of Abd’alaziz, 
making him emir of Africa. He, moreover, granted yearly 
pensions of two hundred pieces of gold to himself and one hun¬ 
dred to each of his sons, and directed him to select from among 
his soldiers five hundred of those who had most distinguished 
themselves in battle, or received most wounds, and give them 
each thirty pieces of gold. Lastly, he revoked the fine formerly 
imposed upon him of fifty thousand dinars of gold, and autho¬ 
rized him to reimburse himself out of the Caliph’s share of the 
spoil. 

This last sum Musa declined to receive for his own benefit, 
but publicly devoted it to the promotion of the faith and the 
good of its professors. Whenever a number of captives were 
put up for sale after a victory, he chose from among them 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS . 


485 


those who were young, vigorous, intelligent, of noble origin, 
and who appeared disposed to.be instructed in the religion of 
Islam. If they were converted, and proved to have sufficient 
talent, he gave them their liberty, and appointed them to com' 
mands in his army; if otherwise, he returned them to the mass 
of captives, to be disposed of in the usual manner. 

The fame of Musa’s victories, and of the immense spoil col¬ 
lected by his troops, brought recruits to his standard from 
Egypt and Syria, and other distant parts; for rapine was be¬ 
coming more and more the predominant passion of the Moslems. 
The army of Musa was no longer composed, like the primitive 
armies of the faith, merely of religious zealots. The campaigns 
in foreign countries, and the necessity, at distant points, of 
recruiting the diminished ranks from such sources as were at 
hand, had relaxed the ancient scruples as to unity of faith, and 
men of different creeds now fbught under the standard of 
Islam without being purified by* conversion. The army was, 
therefore, a motley host of every country and kind; Arabs 
and Syrians, Persians and Copts, and nomadic Africans; ar¬ 
rayed in every kind of garb, and armed with every kind of 
weapon. Musa had succeeded in enlisting in his service many 
of the native tribes; a few of them were Christians, a greater 
proportion idolaters, but the greatest number professed Juda¬ 
ism. They readily amalgamated with the Arabs, having the 
same nomad habits, and the same love of war and rapine. 
They even traced their origin to the same Asiatic stock. Ac¬ 
cording to their traditions five colonies, or tribes, came in an¬ 
cient times from Sabsea, in Arabia the Happy, being expelled' 
thence with their king Ifrique. From these descended the five 
most powerful Berber tribes, the Zenhagians, Muzamudas, 
Zenetes, Gomeres, and Hoares. 

Musa artfully availed himself of these traditions, addressed 
the conquered Berbers as Aulad-arabi (sons of the Arabs), and 
so soothed their pride by this pretended consanguinity, that 
many readily embraced the Moslem faith, and thousands of 
the bravest men of Numidia enrolled themselves of their own 
free will in the armies of Islam. 

Others, however, persisted in waging stubborn war with the 
invaders of their country, and among these the most powerful 
and intrepid were the Zenetes. They were a free, independent, 
and haughty race. Marmol, in his description of Africa, rep¬ 
resents them as inhabiting various parts of the country. 
Some leading a roving life about the plains, living in tents 


486 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


like the Arabs; others having castles and strongholds in the 
mountains; others, very troglodytes, infesting the dens and 
caves of Mount Atlas, and others wandering on the borders of 
the Libyan desert. 

The Gomeres were also a valiant and warlike tribe; inhabit¬ 
ing the mountains of the lesser Atlas, in Mauritania, bordering 
the frontiers of Ceuta, while the Muzamudas lived in the more 
western part of that extreme province, where the great Atlas 
advances into the Atlantic Ocean. 

In the eighty-third year of the Hegira, Musa made one of his 
severest campaigns against a combined force of these Berber 
tribes, collected under the banners of their several princes. 
They had posted themselves in one of the fastnesses of the Atlas 
mountains, to which the only approach was through different 
gorges and defiles. All these were defended with great ob¬ 
stinacy, but were carried, one after'the other, after several 
days of severe fighting. 

The armies at length found themselves in presence of each 
other, when a general conflict was unavoidable. As they 
were drawn out, regarding each other with menacing aspect, a 
Berber chief advanced, and challenged any one of the Moslem 
cavaliers to single combat. There was a delay in answering 
to the challenge; whereupon Musa turned to his son Merwan, 
who had charge of the banners, and told him to meet the Berber 
warrior. The youth handed his banner to his brother, Abd’ala- 
ziz, and stepped forward with alacrity. The Berber, a stark 
and seasoned warrior of the mountains, regarded with surprise 
and almost scorn an opponent scarce arrived at manhood. 
“Return to the camp,” cried he; “ I would not deprive thine 
aged father of so comely a son.” Merwan replied but with his 
weapon, assailing his adversary so vigorously that he retreated 
and sprang upon his horse. He now urged his steed upon the 
youth, and made a thrust at him with a javelin, but Merwan 
seized the weapon with one hand, and with the other thrust 
his own javelin through the Berber’s side, burying it in the 
flanks of the steed; so that both horse and rider were brought 
to the ground and slain. 

The two armies now closed in a general struggle; it was 
bloody and desperate, but ended in the complete defeat of the 
Berbers. Kasleyah, their king, fell fighting to the last. A 
vast number of captives were taken; among them were many 
beautiful maidens, daughters of princes and military chiefs. 
At the division of the spoil, Musa caused these high-born dam- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


487 


sels to stand before him, and bade Merwan, his son, who had 
so recently distinguished himself, to choose among them. The 
youth chose one who was a daughter of the late king Kasleyah. 
She appears to have found solace for the loss of her father in 
the arms of a youthful husband; and idtimately made Merwan 
the father of two sons, Musa and Abd’almalec. 


CHAPTER LVI. 

NAVAL ENTERPRISES OF MUSA—CRUISINGS OF HIS SON ABDOLOLA 
—DEATH OF ABD’ALMALEC. 

The bold and adventurous spirit of Musa Ibn Nosseyr was 
not content with victories on land. “Always endeavor to do 
more than is expected of thee,” was his maxim, and he now 
aspired to achieve triumphs on the sea. He had ports within 
his province, whence the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, in 
the days of their power, had fitted out maritime enterprises. 
Why should he not do the same? 

The feelings of the Arab conquerors had widely changed in 
regard to naval expeditions. When Amru, the conqueror of 
Egypt, was at Alexandria, the Caliph Omar required of him a 
description of the Mediterranean. “ It is a great pool,” replied 
Amru, “which some foolhardy people furrow; looking like 
ants on logs of wood. ” The answer was enough for Omar, who 
was always apprehensive that the Moslems would endanger 
their conquests by rashly-extended enterprises. He forbade 
all maritime expeditions. Perhaps he feared that the inexpe¬ 
rience of the Arabs would expose them to defeat from the 
Franks and Romans, who were practised navigators. 

Moawyah, however, as we have shown, more confident of 
the Moslem capacity for nautical warfare, had launched the 
banner of Islam on the sea from the ancient ports of Tyre and 
Si don, and had scoured the eastern waters of the Mediterra¬ 
nean. The Moslems now had armaments in various ports of 
Syria and Egypt, and warred with the Christians by sea as 
well as by land. Abd’almalec had even ordered Musa’s prede¬ 
cessor, Hossan, to erect an arsenal at Tunis; Musa now under¬ 
took to carry those orders into effect, to found dock-yards, and 
to build a fleet for his proposed enterprise 



488 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


At the outset he was surrounded by those sage doubters who 
are ever ready to chill the ardor of enterprise. They pro¬ 
nounced the scheme rash and impracticable. A gray-headed 
Berber, who had been converted to Islam, spoke in a different 
tone. “Iam one hundred and twenty years old,” said he, 
“ and I well remember hearing my father say, that when the 
Lord of Carthage thought of building his city, the people all, 
as at present, exclaimed against it as impracticable; one alone 
rose and said, Oh king, put thy hand to the work and it will be 
achieved; for the kings, thy predecessors, persevered and 
achieved every thing they undertook, whatever might be the 
difficulty. And I say to thee, Oh emir, put thy hand to this 
work, and God will help thee!” 

Musa did put his hand to the work, and so effectually that 
by the conclusion of the eighty-fourth year of the Hegira, a.d. 
703, the arsenal and dock-yard were complete, and furnished 
with maritime stores, and there was a numerous fleet in the 
port of Tunis. 

About this time a Moslem fleet, sent by Abd’alaziz, the emir 
of Egypt, to make a ravaging descent on the coast of Sardinia, 
entered the port of Susa, which is between Caerwan and Tunis. 
Musa sent provisions to the fleet, but wrote to the commander, 
Atta Ibn Rafi, cautioning him that the season was too late for 
his enterprise, and advising him to remain in port until more 
favorable time and weather. 

Atta treated his letter with contempt, as the advice of a 
landsman; and, having refitted his vessels, put to sea. He 
landed on an island, called by the Arab writers Salsalah, 
probably Linosa or Lampedosa; made considerable booty of 
gold, silver and precious stones, and again set sail on his 
plundering cruise. A violent storm arose, his ships were 
dashed on the rocky coast of Africa, and he and nearly all his 
men were drowned. 

Musa, hearing of the disaster, dispatched his son, Abd’alaziz, 
with a troop of horse to the scene of the shipwreck, to render 
all the assistance in his power, ordering that the vessels and 
crews which survived the storm should repair to the port of 
Tunis; all which was done. At the place of the wreck Abd’al¬ 
aziz found a heavy box cast up on the sea-shore; on being 
opened, its contents proved to be the share of spoil of one of 
the warriors of the fleet who had perished in the sea. 

The author of the tradition from which these facts are 
gleaned, adds, that one day he found an old man sitting on the 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


489 


sea-shore with a reed in his hand, which he attempted to take 
from him. A scuffle ensued; he Avrested the reed from his 
hands, and struck him with it over his head; when lo, it 
broke, and out fell gold coins and pearls and precious stones. 
Whether the old man, thus hardly treated, was one of the 
wrecked cruisers, or a wre«ker seeking to profit by their mis¬ 
fortunes, is not specified in the tradition. The anecdote shows 
in what a random way the treasures of the earth were in those 
days scattered about the world by the predatory hosts of 
Islam. 

The survtvdng ships having been repaired, and added to those 
recently built at Tunis, and the season haAring become favora¬ 
ble, Musa, early in the eighty-fifth year of the Hegira, declared 
his intention to undertake, in person, a naval expedition. 
There was a universal eagerness among the troops to embark; 
Musa selected about a thousand of the choicest of his Avarriors, 
especially those of rank and family, so that the enterprise was 
afterward designated The Expedition of the Nobles. He did 
not, hoAvever, accompany it as he had promised; he had done so 
merely to enlist his bravest men in the undertaking; the com¬ 
mand Avas given to his son Abdolola, to give him an opportu¬ 
nity to distinguish himself; for the reputation of his sons was 
as dear to Musa as his OAvn. 

It was, however, a mere predatory cruise; a type of the rav¬ 
aging piracies from the African ports in after ages. Abdolola 
coasted the fair island of Sicily wioh his ships, landed on the 
western side and plundered a city, which yielded such abun¬ 
dant spoil that each of the thousand men embarked in the 
cruise received one hundred dinars of gold for his share. This 
done, the fleet returned to Africa. 

Soon after the return of his ships, Musa received news of the 
death of his patron Abd’alaziz, which Avas folloAved soon after 
by tidings of the death of the Caliph. On hearing of the death 
of the latter, Musa immediately sent a messenger to Damascus 
to take the oath of allegiance, in his name, to the new Caliph; 
to inform him of the naval achievements of his son Abdolola, 
and to deliver to him his share of the immense booty gained. 
The effect of course was to secure his continuance in office as 
emir of Africa. 

The malady which terminated in the death of Abd’almalec is 
supposed to have been the dropsy. It was attended in its last 
stages Avith excessive thirst, which was aggravated by the pro¬ 
hibition of his physicians that any water should be given to 


490 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


him, lest it should cause certain death. In the paroxysms of 
his malady the expiring Caliph demanded water of his son 
Waled; it was withheld through filial piety. His daughter 
Fatima approached with a flagon, but Waled interfered and 
prevented her; whereupon the Caliph threatened him with dis¬ 
inheritance and his malediction. Fatima handed to him .the 
flagon, he drained it at a draught, and almost instantly ex¬ 
pired. He was about sixty years old at the time of his death,< 
and had reigned about twenty years. Abulfeda gives him a 
character for learning, courage, and foresight. He certainly 
showed ability and management in reuniting, under his sway, 
the dismembere d portions of the Moslem empire, and quelling 
the various sects that rose in arms against him. His foresight 
with regard to his family also was crowned with success, as 
four of his sons succeeded him, severally, in the Caliphat. 

He evinced an illiberal spirit of hostility to the memory of 
Ali, carrying it to such a degree that he would not permit the 
poet Ferazdak to celebrate in song the virtues of any of his 
descendants. Perhaps this may have gained for Abd’almalec 
another by-name with which some of the Arab writers have 
signalized his memory, calling him the “Father of Flies;” for 
so potent, say they, was his breath, that any fly winch alighted 
on his lips died on the spot. 


CHAPTER LVII. 

fNAl/GURATION OF WALED, TWELFTH CALIPH—REVIVAL OF THE 
ARTS UNDER HIS REIGN—HIS TASTE FOR ARCHITECTURE— 
ERECTION OF MOSQUES—CONQUESTS OF HIS GENERALS. 

Waled, the eldest son of Abd’almalec, was proclaimed 
Caliph at Damascus immediately on the death of his father, in 
the eighty-sixth year of the Hegira, and the year 705 of the 
Christian era. He was about thirty-eight years of age, and is 
described as being tall and robust, with a swarthy complexion, 
a face much pitted with the smallpox, and a broad flat nose; ' 
in other respects, which are left to our conjecture, he is said to 
have been of a good countenance. His habits were indolent 
and voluptuous, yet he was of a choleric temper, and some¬ 
what inclined to cruelty. 



MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


491 


During the reign of Waled the arts began to develop them¬ 
selves under the Moslem sway; finding a more genial home in 
the luxurious city of Damascus than they had done in the holy 
cities of Mecca or Medina. Foreign conquests had brought the 
Arabs in contact with the Greeks and the Persians. Inter¬ 
course with them, and residence in their cities, bad gradually 
refined away the gross habits of the desert; had awakened, 
thirst for the sciences, and a relish for the elegancies of culti¬ 
vated life. Little skilled in the principles of government, 
accustomed in their native deserts to the patriarchal rule of 
separate tribes, without any extended scheme of policy or 
combined system of union, the Arabs, suddenly masters of a 
vast and continually widening empire, had to study the art of 
governing in the political institutions of the countries they 
conquered. Persia, the best organized monarchy in Asia, held 
out a model by which they were fain to profit; and in their 
system of emirs vested with the sway of distant and powerful 
provinces, but strictly responsible to the Caliph, we see a copy 
of the satraps or viceroys, the provincial depositaries of the 
power of the Khosrus. 

Since Moawyah had moved the seat of the Caliphat to 
Damascus, a change had come over the style of the Moslem 
court. It was no longer, as in the days of Omar, the confer¬ 
ence of a poorly clad Arab chieftain with his veteran warriors 
and gray-beard companions, seated on their mats in the corner 
of a mosque: the Moslem Caliph at Damascus had now his 
divan, in imitation of the Persian monarch; and his palace be¬ 
gan to assume somewhat of oriental state and splendor. 

In nothing had the Moslem conquerors showed more igno¬ 
rance of affairs than in financial matters. The vast spoils 
acquired in their conquests, and the tribute and taxes imposed 
on subjugated countries, had for a time been treated like the 
chance booty caught up in predatory expeditions in the des¬ 
erts. They were amassed in public treasuries without register 
or account, and shared and apportioned without judgment, 
and often without honesty. Hence continual frauds and 
peculations; hence those charges, so readily brought and 
readily believed, against generals and governors in distant 
stations, of enormous frauds and embezzlements, and hence 
that grasping avarice, that avidity of spoil and treasure, which 
were more and more destroying the original singleness of pur¬ 
pose of the soldiers of Islam. 

Moawyah was the first of the Caliphs who ordered that 


492 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 


registers of tribute and taxes, as well as of spoils, should be 
kept in the Islamite countries, in their respective languages; 
that is to say, in the Greek language in Syria, and in the Per¬ 
sian language in Irak; but Abd’almalec went further, and 
ordered that they should all be kept in Arabic. Nothing, how¬ 
ever, could effectually check the extortion and corruption 
which was prevailing more and more in the administration of 
the conquered provinces. Even the rude Arab soldier, who in 
his desert would have been content with his tent of hair-cloth, 
now aspired to the possession of fertile lands, or a residence 
amid the voluptuous pleasures of the city. 

Waled had grown up amid the refinements and corruptions 
of the transplanted Caliphat. He was more of a Greek and 
Persian than an Arab in his tastes, and the very opposite of 
that primitive Moslem, Omar, in most of his habitudes. On 
assuming the sovereign power he confirmed all the emirs or 
governors of provinces, and also the generals appointed by his 
father. On these he devolved all measures of government and 
warlike duties; for himself, he led a soft, luxurious life amidst 
the delights of his harem. Yet, though he had sixty-three 
wives, he does not appear to have left any issue. Much of his 
time was devoted to the arts, and especially the art of archi¬ 
tecture, in which he left some noble monuments to perpetuate 
his fame. 

He caused the principal mosque at Cano to be demolished, 
and one erected of greater majesty, the pillars of which had 
gilded capitals. He enlarged and beautified the grand mosque 
erected on the site of the temple of Solomon, for he was anx¬ 
ious to perpetuate the pilgrimage to Jerusalem established by 
his father. Pie gave command that the bounds of the mosque 
at Medina should be extended so as to include the tomb of the 
prophet, and the nine mansions of his wives. He furthermore 
ordered that all the buildings round the Caaba at Mecca 
should be thrown down, and a magnificent quadrangular 
mosque erected, such as is to be seen*at the present day. For 
this purpose he sent a body of skilful Syrian architects from 
Damascus. 

Many of the faithful were grieved, particularly those well 
stricken in years, the old residents of Mecca, to see the ancient 
simplicity established by the prophet, violated by the splendor 
of this edifice, especially as the dwellings of numerous indi¬ 
viduals were demolished to furnish a vast square for the 
foundations of the new edifice, which now inclosed within its 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 493 

circuit tlie Caaba, the well of Zem Zem, and the stations of 
different sects of Moslems which came in pilgrimage. 

All these works were carried on under the supervision of 
his emirs, but the Caliph attended in person to the erection of 
a grand mosque in his capital of Damascus. In making ar¬ 
rangements for this majestic pile he cast his eyes on the 
superb church of St. John the Baptist, which had been em¬ 
bellished by the Roman emperors during successive ages, and 
enriched with the bones and relics of saints and martyrs. He 
offered the Christians forty thousand dinars of gold for this 
holy edifice; but they replied, gold was of no value in com¬ 
parison with the sacred bones enshrined within its walls. 

The Caliph, therefore, took possession of the church on his 
own authority, and either demolished or altered it so as to suit 
his purpose in the construction of his mosque, and did not 
allow the Christian owners a single dirhem of compensation. 
He employed twelve thousand workmen constantly .in this 
architectural enterprise, and one of his greatest regrets in his 
last moments was that he should not live to see it completed. 

The architecture of these mosques was a mixture of Greek 
and Persian, and gave rise to the Saracenic style, of which 
Waled may be said to be founder. The slender and graceful 
palm-tree may have served as a model for its columns, as the 
clustering trees and umbrageous forests of the north are 
thought to have thrown their massive forms and ^shadowy 
glooms into Gothic architecture. These two kinds of archi¬ 
tecture have often been confounded, but the Saracenic takes 
the precedence; the Gothic borrowed graces and embellish¬ 
ments from it in the times of the Crusades. 

While the Caliph Waled lived indolently and voluptuously 
at Damascus, or occupied himself in erecting mosques, his gen¬ 
erals extended his empire in various directions. Moslema Ibn 
Abd’almalec, one of his fourteen brothers, led an army into Asia 
Minor, invaded Cappadocia, and laid siege to Tyana, a strong 
city garrisoned with imperial troops. It was so closely in¬ 
vested that it could receive no provisions; but the besiegers 
were equally in want of supplies. The contest was fierce on 
both sides, for both were sharpened and irritated by hunger, 
and it became a contest which could hold out longest against 
famine. 

The duration of the siege enabled the emperor to send rein¬ 
forcements to the place, hut they were raw, undisciplined re¬ 
cruits. who were routed by the hungry Moslems, their camp 


494 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


captured, and their provisions greedily devoured. The defeat 
of these reinforcements rendered the defence of the city hope¬ 
less, and the pressure of famine hastened a capitulation, the 
besieged not being aware that the besiegers were nearly as 
much famished as themselves. Moslema is accused by Chris¬ 
tian writers of having violated the conditions of surrender; 
many of the inhabitants were driven forth into the deserts, 
iknd many of the remainder were taken for slaves. In a sub¬ 
sequent year Moslema made a successful incursion into Pontus 
and Armenia, a great part of which he subjugated, and took 
the city of Amasia, after a severely contested siege. He after¬ 
ward made a victorious campaign into Galatia, ravaging the 
whole province, and bearing away rich spoils and numerous 
captives. 

While Moslema was thus bringing Asia Minor into subjec¬ 
tion, his son Khatiba, a youth of great bravery, was no less 
successful in extending the empire of the faith toward the East. 
Appointed to the government of Khorassan, he did not content 
himself with attending to the affairs of his own province, but 
crossing the Oxus, ravaged the provinces of Turkistan, de¬ 
feated a great army of Turks and Tartars,, by which he had 
been beleaguered and reduced to great straits, and took the 
capital city of Bochara, with many others of inferior note. 

He defeated also Magourek, the Khan of Charism, and drove 
him to take refuge in the great city of Samarcand. This city, 
anciently called Marcanda, was one of the chief marts of Asia, 
as well for the wares imported from China and Tangut across 
the desert of Cobi, as of those brought through the mountains 
of the great Thibet, and those conveyed from India to the Cas¬ 
pian Sea. It was, therefore, a great resort and resting-place 
for caravans from all quarters. The surrounding country was 
renowned throughout the East for fertility, and ranked among 
the paradises or gardens of Asia. 

To this city Khatiba laid siege, but the inhabitants set him at 
defiance, being confident of the strength of their walls, and 
aware that the Arabs had no battering-rams, nor other engines 
necessary for the attack of fortified places. A long and close 
siege, however, reduced the garrison to great extremity, and 
finding that the besiegers were preparing to carry the place by 
storm, they capitulated, agreeing to pay an annual tribute of 
one thousand dinars of gold and three thousand slaves. 

Khatiba erected a magnificent mosque in that metropolis, 
and officiated personally in expounding the doctrines of Islam, 


MAHOMET AND IIIS SUCCESSORS. 495 

which began soon to supersede the religion of the Magians or 
Ghebers. 

Extensive victories were likewise achieved in India during 
the reign of Waled, by Mohamed Ibn Casern, a native of 
Thayef, one of his generals, who conquered the kingdom of 
Sindia, or Sinde, killed its sovereign in battle, and sent his 
head to the Caliph; overran a great part of Central India, and 
first planted the standard of Islam on the banks of the Ganges, 
the sacred river of the Hindoos. 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

FURTHER TRIUMPHS OF MUSA IBN NOSSEYR—NAVAL ENTERPRISES 
—DESCENTS IN SICILY, SARDINIA, AND MALLORCA—INVASION 
OF TINGITANIA—PROJECTS FOR THE INVASION OF SPAIN—CON¬ 
CLUSION. 

To return to affairs in Africa. During the first years of the 
Caliphat of Waled the naval armaments fitted out by Musa in 
the ports of Eastern Africa continued to scour the Mediterra¬ 
nean and carry terror and devastation into its islands. One of 
them coasted the island of Sicily in the eighty-sixth year of 
the Hegira, and attacked the city of Syracuse; but the object 
appears to have been mere plunder, not to retain possession. 
Another ravaged the island of Sardinia, sacked its cities, and 
brought off a vast number of prisoners and immense booty: 
Among the captives were Christian women of great beauty, 
and highly prized in the Eastern harems. The command of 
the sea was ultimately given by Musa to his son Abdolola, who 
added to his nautical reputation by a descent upon the island 
of Mallorca. 

'While Abdolola was rejoicing his father’s heart by exploits 
and triumphs on the sea, Abd’alaziz contributed no less to his 
pride and exultation by his achievements on land. Aided by 
this favorite son, Musa carried the terror of the Moslem arms 
to the western extremity of Mount Atlas, subduing Fez, Du- 
quella, Morocco, and Sus. The valiant tribes of the Zenetes at 
length made peace, and entered into compact with him; from 
other tribes Musa took hostages, and by degrees the sway of 
the Caliph was established throughout western Almagreb to 
Cape Non on the Atlantic. 



496 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


Musa was not a ferocious conqueror. The countries sub¬ 
jected by his arms became objects of his paternal care. He 
introduced law and order, instructed the natives in the doc¬ 
trines of Islam, and defended the peaceful cultivators of the 
fields and residents in the cities against the incursions of pre¬ 
datory tribes. In return they requited his protection by con¬ 
tributing their fruits and flocks to the support of the armies, 
and furnishing steeds matchless for speed and beauty. 

One region, however, yet remained to be subjugated before 
the conquest of Northern Africa would be complete; the 
ancient Tingis, or Tingitania, the northern extremity of Alma- 
greb. Here the continent of Africa protruded boldly to meet 
the continent of Europe; a narrow strait intervened—the strait 
of Hercules, the gate of the Mediterranean Sea. Two rocky 
promontories appeared to guard it on each side, the far-famed 
pillars of Hercules. Two rock-built cities, Ceuta and Tangiers, 
on the African coast, were the keys of this gate, and con¬ 
trolled the neighboring sea-board. These had been held in 
ancient times by the Berber kings, who made this region their 
stronghold, and Tangiers their seat of power; but the keys 
had been wrested from their hands at widely-separated peri¬ 
ods, first by the Vandals, and afterward by the Goths, the 
conquerors of the opposite country of Spain; and the Gothic 
Spaniards had now held military possession for several genera¬ 
tions. 

Musa seems to have reserved this province for his last Afri¬ 
can campaign. He stationed his son Merwan, with ten thou¬ 
sand men, in a fortified camp on the frontier, while Taric Ibn 
Zeyad, a veteran general scarred in many a battle, scoured the 
country from the fountains or head waters of the river Mo- 
luya to the mountains of Aldaran. The province was bravely 
defended by a Gothic noble, Count Julian by name, but he 
was gradually driven to shut himself up in Ceuta. Meantime 
Tangiers yielded to the Moslem arms after an obstinate de¬ 
fence, and was strongly garrisoned by Arab and Egyptian 
troops, and the command given to Taric. An attempt was 
made to convert the Christian inhabitants to the faith of Is¬ 
lam; the Berber part easily conformed, but the Gothic persisted 
in unbelief, and rather than give up their religion, abandoned 
their abodes, and crossed over to Andaluz with the loss of all 
their property. 

Musa now advanced upon Ceuta, into which Count Julian 


MAHOMET ANT) HIS SUCCESSORS. 


497 


had drawn all his troops. He attempted to carry it by storm, 
but was gallantly repulsed, with the loss of many of his best 
troops. Repeated assaults were made with no better success; 
the city was situated on a promontory, and strongly fortified. 
Musa now laid Waste the surrounding country, thinking to re- 
duce the place by famine, but the proximity of Spain enabled 
the garrison to receive supplies and reinforcements across the 
straits. 

Months were' expended in this protracted and unavailing 
siege. According to some accounts Musa retired personally 
from the attempt, and returned to his seat of government at 
Caerwan, leaving the army and province in charge of his son 
Merwan and Taric in command of Tangiers. 

And now occurred one of the most memorable pieces of trea¬ 
son in history. Count Julian, who had so nobly defended his 
post and checked the hitherto irresistible arms of Islam, all at 
once made secret offers, not merely to deliver up Ceuta to the 
Moslem commander, but to betray Andaluz itself into his 
hands. The country he represented as rife for a revolt against 
Roderick, the Gothic king, who was considered a usurper; and 
he offered to accompany and aid the Moslems in a descent 
upon the coast, where he had numerous friends ready to flock 
to his standard. 

Of the private wrongs received by Count Julian from his so¬ 
vereign, which provoked him to this stupendous act of treason, 
we shall here say nothing. Musa was startled by his proposi¬ 
tion. He had long cast a wistful eye at the mountains of An¬ 
daluz, brightening beyond the strait, but hitherto the conquest 
of Northern Africa had tasked all his means. Even now he 
feared to trust too readily to a man whose very proposition 
showed an utter want of faith. He determined, therefore, to 
dispatch Taric Ibn Zeyad on a reconnoitering expedition to 
coast the opposite shores, accompanied by Count Julian, and 
ascertain the truth of his representations. 

Taric accordingly embarked with a few hundred men in four 
merchant vessels, crossed the straits under the guidance of 
Count Julian, who, on landing, dispatched emissaries to his 
friends and adherents, summoning them to a conference at 
Jesirah al Khadra, or the Green Island, now Algeziras. Here, 
in presence of Taric, they confirmed all that Julian had said of 
the rebellious disposition of the country, and of their own 
readiness to join the standard of an invader. A plundering 


498 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 


cruise along the coast convinced Taric of the wealth of the 
country, and he returned to the African shores with ample 
spoils and female captives of great beauty. 

A new career of conquest seemed thus opening upon Musa. 
His predecessor, Acbali, had spurred his steed into the waves 
of the Atlantic, and sighed that there were no further lands to 
conquer; but here was another quarter of the world inviting 
the triumphs of Islam. He forthwith wrote to the Caliph, 
giving a glowing account of the country thus held out for con¬ 
quest ; a country abounding in noble monuments and wealthy 
cities; rivalling Syria in the fertility of its soil and the beauty 
of its climate; Yemen, or Arabia the Happy, in its tempera¬ 
ture ; India in its flowers and spices; Hegiaz in its fruits and 
productions; Cathay in its precious and abundant mines; 
Aden in the excellence of its ports and harbors. “With the 
aid of God,” added he, “I have reduced to obedience the Zen- 
etes and the other Berber tribes of Zab and Derar, Zaara, Ma- 
zamuda, and Sus: the standard of Islam floats triumphant on 
the walls of Tangiers; thence to the opposite coast of Andaluz 
is but a space of twelve miles. Let but the Commander of the 
Faithful give the word, and the conquerors of Africa will cross 
into that land, there to carry the knowledge of the true God 
and the law of the Koran.” 

The Arab spirit of the Caliph was roused by this magnificent 
prospect of new conquests. He called to mind a tradition that 
Mahomet had promised the extension of his law to the utter¬ 
most regions of the West; and he now gave full authority to 
Musa to proceed in his pious enterprise, and carry the sword 
of Islam into the benighted land of Andaluz. 

We have thus accomplished our self-allotted task. We have 
set forth, in simple and succinct narrative, a certain portion of 
this wonder fid career of fanatical conquest. We have traced 
the progress of the little cloud which rose out of the deserts of 
Arabia, ‘ ‘ no bigger than a man’s hand, ” until it has spread 
out and overshadowed the ancient quarters of the world and 
all their faded glories. We have shown the handful of prose¬ 
lytes of a pseudo prophet, driven from city to city, lurking in 
dens and caves of the earth; but at length rising to be leaders 
of armies and mighty conquerors; overcoming in pitched bat¬ 
tle the Eoman cohort, the Grecian phalanx, and the gorgeous 
hosts of Persia; carrying their victories from the gates of tho 
Caucasus to the western descents of Mount Atlas; from the 
banks of the Ganges to the Sus, the ultimate river in Mauri- 


MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 499 

tania; and now planting their standard on the pillars of Her¬ 
cules, and threatening Europe with like subjugation. 

Here, however, we stay our hand. Here we lay down our 
pen. Whether it will ever be our lot to resume this theme, to 
cross with the Moslem hosts the strait of Hercules, and narrate 
their memorable conquest of Gothic Spain, is one of those nn 
certainties of mortal life and aspirations of literary zeal which 
beguile us with agreeable dreams, but too often end in disap¬ 
pointment. 


THE ENB= 







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MOORISH 


CHRONICLES. 


WASHINGTON IRVING, 



MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


\ 

* --- 

CONTENTS. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 

\ 

PAGE 

Vtroduction. 7 

CHAPTER I. 

Installation of Fernan Gonzalez as Count of Castile.—His first campaign against 
the Moors.—Victory of San Quirce.—How the Count disposed of the spoils_ 8 

CHAPTER H. 

Of the sally from Burgos and surprise of the castle of Lara.—Capitulation ol 
the town.—Visit to Alfonso the Great, King of Leon. 11 

CHAPTER IE. 

Expedition against the fortress Mugnon.—Desperate defence of the Moors.— 

. Enterprise against Castro Xeriz. 14 

CHAPTER IV. 

How the Count of Castile and the King of Leon make a triumphant foray into 
the Moorish country.—Capture ot Salamanca.—Of the challenge brought by 
the Herald and of the Count’s defiance. V> 

CHAPTER V. 

A night assault upon the castle of Carazo.—The Moorish maiden who betrayed 
the garrison. 16 

CHAPTER VI. 

Death of Alfonso, King of Leon.—The Moors determined to strike a fresh blow 
at the Count, who summons all Castile to his standard.—Of his hunt in the 
forest while waiting for the enemy, and of the hermit that he met with. 19 

CHAPTER VH. 

- * I 

The battle of the Ford or Cascajares. 22 











4 


CONTEXTS. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

PACE 

Of th* message sent by the Count to Sancho II., King of Navarre, and the reply. 

—Their encounter in battle. 23 

CHAPTER IX. 

How the Count of Toulouse makes a campaign against Castile, and how he re¬ 
turns in his coffin. 27 

* 

CHAPTER X. 

How the Count went to receive the hand of a Princess, and was thrown into a 
dungeon.—Of the stranger that visited him in his chains, and of the appeal 
that he made to the Princess for his deliverance. 28 

CHAPTER XI. 

Or the meditations of the Princess, and their result.—Her flight from the prison 
with the Count, and perils of the escape.—The nuptials . 30 

CHAPTER XII. 

King Garcia confined in Burgos by the Count.—The Princess intercedes for his 
release.. 34 

CHAPTER Xin. 

Of the expedition against the ancient city of Sylo.—The unwitting trespass of 
the Count into a convent, and his compunction thereupon. 34 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Of the Moorish host that came up from Cordova, and how the Count repaired 
to the hermitage of San Pedro, and prayed for success against them, and re¬ 
ceived assurance of victory in a vision.—Battle of Hazinas. 36 

• CHAPTER XV. 

The Count imprisoned by the King of Leon.—The Countess concerts his escape. 
—Leon and Castile united by the marriage of the Prince Ordono with Urraca, 
the daughter of the Count by his first wife. 40 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Moorish incursion into Castile.—Battle of San Estevan.—Of Pascual Vivas and 
the miracle that befell him.—Death of Ordono III. . 42 

CHAPTER XVII. 

King Sancho the Fat.—Of the homage he exacted from Count Fernan Gonzalez, 
and of the strange bargain that he made with him for the purchase of his 
horse and falcon. 46 

CHAPTER XVIH. 

Further of the horse and falcon . 48 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The last campaign of Count Fernan.—His death. 50 














CONTENTS. 


5 



CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The parentage of Fernando.—Queen Berenguela.—The Laras.—Don Alvar con¬ 
ceals the death of King Henry.—Mission of Queen Berenguela to Alfonso IX. 

—She renounces the crown of Castile in favor of her son Fernando. 55 


CHAPTER II. 

King Alfonso of Leon ravages Castile.—Captivity of Don Alvar.—Death of the 
Laras . 59 


CHAPTER III. 

Marriage of King Fernando.—Campaign against the Moors.—Aben Mohamed, 
King of Baeza, declares himself the vassal of King Fernando.—They march to 
Jaen.—Burning of the tower.—Fernando commences the building of the 
cathedral at Toledo. 63 

\ 


CHAPTER IV. 


Assassination of Aben Mohamed.—His head carried as a present to Abullale, the 
Moorish King of Seville.—Advance of the Christians into Andalusia.—Abullale 
purchases a truce. 66 


CHAPTER V. 

Aben Hud.—Abullale purchases another year’s truce.—Fernando hears of the 
death of his father, the King of Leon, while pressing the siege of Jaen.—He 
becomes sovereign of the two kingdoms of Leon and Castile. 68 

CHAPTER VI. 

Expedition of the Prince Alonzo against the Moors.—Encamps on the banks of 
the Guaaalete.—Aben Hud marches out from Xerez, and gives battle.—Prowess 
of Garcia Perez de Vargas.—Flight and pursuit of the Moors.—Miracle of the 


blessed Santiago. 70 

CHAPTER VII. 

A bold attempt upon Cordova, the seat of Moorish power. 75 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A spy in the Christian camp.—Death of Aben Hud.—A vital blow to Moslem 
power.—Surrender of Cordova to King Fernando. 77 

CHAPTER IX. 

Marriage of King Fernando to the Princess Juana.—Famine at Cordova.—Don 
Alvar Perez. 31 


CHAPTER X. 

Aben Alhamar, founder of the Alhambra —Fortiflps Granada and makes it his 
capital.—Attempts to surprise the castle of Martos.—Peril of the fortress.—A 
woman’s stratagem to save it.—Diego Perez, the Smasher.—Death of Count 
Alvar Perez de Castro. 












6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XI. 

PAGB 

Aben Hudiel, the Moorish King of Murcia, becomes the vassal of King Fernan¬ 
do.—Aben Alhamar seeks to drive the Christians out of Andalusia.—Fer¬ 
nando takes the field against him.—Ravages of the king.—His last meeting 
with the queen-mother. 87 


CHAPTER XII. 

King Fernando’s expedition to Andalusia.—Siege of Jaen.—Secret departure of 
Aben Alhamar for the Christian camp.—He acknowledges himself the vassal 
of the king, who enters Jaen in triumph. 92 

CHAPTER XIH. 

Axataf, King of Seville, exasperated at the submission of the King of Granada, 
rejects the propositions of King Fernando for a truce.—The latter is en¬ 
couraged by a vision to undertake the conquest of the city of Seville.—Death 
of Queen Berenguela.—A diplomatic marriage. 94 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Investmentof Seville. — All Spain aroused to arms.—Surrender of Alcala del Rio. 

—The fleet of Admiral Ramon Bonifaz advances up the Guadalquivir.—Don 
Pelayo Correa, Master of Santiago.—His valorous deeds, and the miracles 
wrought in his behalf. 97 


CHAPTER XV. 

King Fernando changes his camp.—Garci Perez and the seven Moors. 101 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Of the raft built by the Moors, and how it was boarded by Admiral Bonifaz.— 
Destruction of the Moorish fleet.—Succor from Africa. 104 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Of the stout Prior, Ferran Ruyz, and how he rescued his cattle from the Moors. 
—Further enterprises of the Prior, and of the ambuscade into which he fell... 106 

CHAPTER XVIH. 

Bravado of the three cavaliers.—Ambush at the bridge over the Guadayra.— 
Desperate valor of Garci Perez.—Grand attempt of Admiral Bonifaz on the 
bridge of boats.—Seville dismembered from Triana. 109 

1 •> 

CHAPTER XIX 

Investment of Triana.—Garci Perez and the Infanzon... 114 

CHAPTER XX. 

Capitulation of Seville.—Dispersion of the Moorish inhabitants.—Triumphant 
entry of King Fernando. 1 


CHAPTER XXI. 


Death of King Fernando 


119 












MOORISH CHRONICLES 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ, 

COUNT OF CASTILE. 


INTRODUCTION. 

At the time of the general wreck of Spain by the sudden 
tempest of Arab invasion, many of the inhabitants took ref¬ 
uge in the mountains of the Asturias, burying themselves in 
narrow valleys difficult of access, wherever a constant stream 
of water afforded a green bosom of pasture-land and scanty 
fields for cultivation. For mutual protection they gathered to¬ 
gether in small villages called castros, or castrellos, with watch- 
towers and fortresses on impending cliffs, in which they might 
shelter and defend themselves in case of sudden inroad. Thus 
arose the kingdom of the Asturias, subject to Pelayo and the 
kings his successors, who gradually extended their dominions, 
built towns and cities, and after a time fixed their seat of gov¬ 
ernment at the city of Leon. 

An important part of the region over which they bore sway 
was ancient Cantabria, extending from the Bay of Biscay to 
the Duero, and called Castile from the number of castles with 
which it was studded. They divided it into seigniories, over 
which they placed civil and military governors called counts— 
a title said to be derived from the Latin comes , a companion, 
the person enjoying it being admitted to the familiar compan 
ionship of the king, entering into his councils in time of peace, 
and accompanying him to the field in time of war. The title 
of count was therefore more dignified than that of duke in the 
time of the Gothic kings. 




8 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


The power of these counts increased to such a degree that 
four of them formed a league to declare themselves independ¬ 
ent of the crown of Leon. Ordono II., who was then king, re¬ 
ceived notice of it, and got them into his power by force, as 
some assert, but as others maintain, by perfidious artifice. At 
any rate, they were brought to court, convicted of treason, and 
publicly beheaded. The Castilians flew to arms to revenge 
their deaths. Ordono took the field with a powerful army, but 
Ins own death defeated all his plans. 

The Castilians now threw off allegiance to the kingdom of 
Leon, and elected two judges to rule over them—one in a civil, 
the other in a military capacity. The first who filled those 
stations were Nufio Easura and Lain Calvo, two powerful no¬ 
bles, the former descended from Diego Porcell©, a count of 
Lara; the latter, ancestor of the renowned Cid Campeador. 

Nuno Easura, the civil and political judge, was succeeded by 
his son Gonzalez Nuno, who married Dona Ximena, a daughter 
of one of the counts of Castile put to death by Ordono II. 
From this marriage came Fernan Gonzalez, the subject of the 
following chronicle. 


CHAPTEE I. 

INSTALLATION OP FERNAN GONZALEZ AS COUNT OF CASTILE.— 
HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE MOORS.—VICTORY OF SAN 
QUIRCE.—HOW THE COUNT DISPOSED OF THE SPOILS. 

The renowned Fernan Gonzalez, the most complete hero of 
his time, was born about the year 887. Historians trace hjs 
descent to Nuno Belchidez, nephew of the Emperor Charle¬ 
magne, and Dona Sula Bella, granddaughter to the Prince Don 
Sancho, rightful sovereign of Spain, but superseded by Eoder- 
ick, the last of the Gothic kings. 

Fernan Gonzalez was hardily educated among the mountains 
in a strong place called Maron, in the house of Martin Gonzalez, 
a gallant and veteran cavalier. From his earliest years he was 
inured to all kinds of toils and perils, taught to hunt, to hawk, 
to ride the great horse, to manage sword, lance, and buckler; 
lira word, he was accomplished in all the noble exercises befit¬ 
ting a cavalier. 



CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


9 


His father Gonzalvo Nunez died in 903, and his elder brother 
Rodrigo in 904, without issue; and such was the admiration al¬ 
ready entertained of Fernan Gonzalez by the hardy mountain¬ 
eers and old Castilian warriors, that though scarce seventeen 
years of age he was unanimously elected to rule over them. 
Iiis title is said to have been Count, Duke, and Consul, under 
the seigniory of Alonzo the Great, King of Leon. A cortes, or 
assemblage of the nobility and chivalry of Castile and of the 
mountains, met together at the recently built city of Burgos to 
do honor to his installation. Sebastian, the renowned Bishop 
of Oca, officiated. 

In those stern days of Spain, the situation of a sovereign was 
not that of silken ease and idle ceremonial. When he put the 
rich crown upon his head, he encircled it likewise with shining 
steel. With the sceptre were united the lance and shield, em¬ 
blems of perpetual war against the enemies of the faith. The 
cortes took this occasion to pass the following laws for the 
government of the realm: 

1 . Above all things the people should observe the law of God, 
the canons and statutes of the holy fathers, the liberty and 
privileges of the Church, and the respect due to its ministers. 

2 . No person should prosecute another out of Castile at any 
tribunal of justice or of arms, under pain of being considered 
a stranger. 

3. All Jews and Moors who refused to acknowledge the 
Christian faith should depart from Castile within two months. 

4. That cavaliers of noble blood should treat their tenants 
and vassals with love and gentleness. 

5. That he who slew another, or committed any other grave 
offence, should make equal measure of atonement. 

6 . That no one should take the property of another; but, if 
oppressed by poverty, should come to the count, who ought to 
be as a father to all. 

7 . That all should unite and be of one heart, and aid one 
another in defense of their faith and of their country. 

Such were the ordinances of the ancient Cortes of Burgos; 
brief and simple, and easy to be understood; not, as at the 
present day, multifarious, and perplexed, to the confusion and 
ruin of clients and the enrichment of lawyers. 

Scarce was the installation ended, and while Burgos was yet 
abandoned to festivity, the young count, with the impatient 
ardor of youth, caused the trumpets to sound through the 
streets a call to arms. A captain of the Moorish king of 


10 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Toledo was ravaging the territory of Castile at the head of 
seven thousand troops, and against him the youthful count 
determined to make his first campaign. In the spur of the 
moment but one hundred horsemen and fifteen hundred foot- 
soldiers could be collected; but with this slender force the 
count prepared to take the field. Kuy Velazquez, a valiant 
cavalier, remonstrated against such rashness, but in vain. “ I 
owe,” said the count, a “death to the grave; the debt can 
never be paid so honorably as in the service of God and my 
country. Let every one, therefore, address himself heart and 
hand to this enterprise; for if I come face to face with this 
Moor, I will most assuredly give him battle.” So saying, he 
knelt before Bishop Sebastian of Salamanca and craved his 
benediction. The reverend prelate invoked on his head the 
blessing and protection of Heaven, for his heart yearned 
toward him; but when he saw the youthful warrior about to 
depart, he kindled as it were, with r holy martial fire, and 
ordering his steed to be saddled he sallied forth with him to 
the wars. 

The little army soon came upon traces of the enemy in fields 
laid waste, and the smoking ruins of villages and hamlets. 
The count sent out scouts to clamber every height and explore 
every defile. From the summit of a hill they beheld the 
Moors encamped in a valley which was covered with the flocks 
and herds swept from the neighboring country. The camp of 
the marauders was formidable as to numbers, with various 
standards floating in the breeze; fop in this foray were en¬ 
gaged the Moorish chiefs of Saragossa, Denia, and Seville, to¬ 
gether with many valiant Moslems who had crossed the straits 
from Africa to share in what they considered a holy enter¬ 
prise. The scouts observed, however, that the most negligent 
security reigned throughout the camp; some reposing, others 
feasting and revelling, all evidently considering themselves 
safe from any attack. 

Upon hearing this the count led his men secretly and silently 
to the assault, and came upon the Moors in the midst of their 
revelry, before they had time to buckle on their armor. The 
infidels, however, made a brave though confused resistance; 
the camp was strewn w r ith their dead; many were taken pri¬ 
soners, and the rest began to *falter. The count killed their 
captain-general with his own hand, in single fight, as he was 
bravely rallying his troops. Upon seeing him fall, the Moors 
threw down their weapons and fled. 


CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ . H 

Immense booty was found in the Moorish camp,—partly the 
rich arms and equipments of the infidel warriors, partly the 
plunder of the country. An ordinary victor would have 
merely shared the spoils with his soldiery, but the count 
was as pious as he was brave, and, moreover, had by his side 
the venerable Bishop of Salamanca as counsellor. Contenting 
himself, therefore, with distributing one-third among his 
soldiery, he shared the rest with God, devoting a large part to 
the Church, and to the relief of souls in purgatory—a pious 
custom, which he ever after observed. He moreover founded 
a church on the field of battle, dedicated to St. Quirce, on 
whose festival (the lGth July) this victory was obtained. To 
this church was subsequently added a monastery where a 
worthy fraternity of monks were maintained in the odor of 
sanctity, to perpetuate, the memory of this victory. All this 
was doubtless owing to the providental presence of the good 
bishop on this occasion; and this is one instance of the great 
benefit derived from those priests and monks and other pur¬ 
veyors of the Church, who hovered about the Christian camps 
throughout all these wars with the infidels. 


CHAPTER II. 

OF THE SALLY FROM BURGOS AND SURPRISE OF THE CASTLE OF 
LARA.—CAPITULATION OF THE TOWN.—VISIT TO ALFONSO THE 
GREAT KING OF LEON. 

Count Fernan Gonzalez did not remain idle after the 
victory of San Quirce. There was at this time an old castle, 
strong but much battered in the wars, which protected a small 
town, the remains of the once flourishing city of Lara. It was 
the ancient domain of his family, but was at present in posses¬ 
sion of the Moors. In sooth it had repeatedly been taken and 
retaken: for in those iron days no castle nor fortress remained 
long under the same masters. One year it was in the hands of 
the Christians, the next, of the Moors. Some of these castles, 
with their dependent towns, were sacked, burnt, and demo¬ 
lished; others remained silent and deserted, their original 
owners fearing to reside in them; and their ruined towers were 
only tenanted by bats and owls and screaming birds of prey. 
Lara had lain for a time in ruins after being captured by the 



12 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Moors, but bad been rebuilt by them with diminished grand¬ 
eur, and they held a strong garrison in the castle, whence they 
sallied forth occasionally to ravage the lands of the Christians. 
The Moorish chieftain of Lara, as has been observed, was 
among the associated marauders who had been routed in the 
battle of San Quirce; and the Count Fernan Gonzalez thought 
this a favorable time to strike for the recovery of his family 
domain, now that the infidel possessor was weakened by de¬ 
feat and could receive no succor. 

Appointing Rodrigo Yelasquez and the Count Don Yela 
Alvarez to act as governors of Castile during his absence, the 
count sallied forth from Burgos with a brilliant train of 
chivalry. Among the distinguished cavaliers who attended 
him were Martin Gonzalez, Don Gustios Gonzalez, Don Ye- 
lasco, and Don Lope de Biscaya which last brought a goodly 
train of stout Biscayans. The alfarez, or standard-bearer was 
Orbita Yelasquez, who had distinguished himself in the battle 
of San Quirce. He bore as a standard a great; cross of silver, 
which shone gloriously in front of the host, and. is preserved, 
even to the present day, in the church of San Pedro de Ar- 
lanza. One hundred and fifty noble cavaliers, well armed 
and mounted, with many esquires and pages of the lance, 
and three thousand foot-soldiers, all picked men, formed this 
small but stout-hearted army. 

The count led his troops with such caution that they arrived 
in the neighborhood of Lara without being discovered. It was 
the vigil of St. John; the country was wrapped in evening 
shadows, and the count was enabled to approach near to the 
place to make his observations. He perceived that his force 
was too inconsiderable to invest the town and fortress. Be¬ 
sides, about two leagues distant was the gaunt and rock-built 
castle of Carazo, a presidio or stronghold of the Moors, whence 
he might be attacked in the rear, should he linger before the 
fortress. It was evident, therefore, that whatever was to be 
effected must be done promptly and by sudden surprise. Re¬ 
volving these things in Ms mind, he put Ms troops in ambush 
in a deep ravine where they took their rest, while he kept 
watch upon the castle; maturing Ms plans against the morrow. 
In this way he passed Ms midsummer’s Mght, the vigil of the 
blessed St. John. 

The festival of St. John is observed as well by Mahometans 
as Christians. During the night the bonfires blazed on the 
hill-tops and the sound of music and festivity was heard from 


CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


13 


within the town. When the rising sun shone along the valley 
of the Arlan za, the Moors in the castle, unsuspicious of any 
lurking danger, threw open the gates and issued forth to rec¬ 
reate themselves in the green fields and along the banks of the 
river. When they had proceeded to a considerable distance, 
and a hill shut them from view, the count with his eager fol¬ 
lowers issued silently but swiftly from their hiding-place and 
made directly for* the castle. On the way they met with an¬ 
other band of Moors who had likewise come forth for amuse¬ 
ment. The count struck the leader to the earth with one blow 
of his lance; the rest were either slain or taken prisoners; so 
that not one escaped to give the alarm. 

Those of the garrison who had remained in the castle, seeing 
a Christian force rushing up to the very walls, hastened to 
close the gates, but it was too late. The count and his cava¬ 
liers burst them open and put every one to the sword who 
made opposition. Leaving Don Velasco and a number of 
soldiers to guard the castle, the count hastened with the rest 
in pursuit of the Moor's who were solemnizing the day on the 
banks of the Alanza. Some were reclining on the grass, 
others were amusing themselves with music and the popular 
dance of the Zambra, while their arms lay scattered among 
the herbage. 

At sight of the Christians, they snatched up their weapons 
and made a desperate though vain resistance. Within two 
hours almost all were either slain or captured; a few escaped 
to the neighboring mountains of Carazo. The town, seeing 
the castle in the hands of the Christians, and the garrison 
routed and destroyed, readily capitulated; and the inhabi¬ 
tants were permitted to retain unmolested possession of their 
houses, on agreeing to pay to the count the same tribute which 
had been exacted from them by the Moorish king. Don 
Velasco was left alcaid of the fortress, and the count returned, 
covered with glory, to his capital of Burgos. 

The brilliant victories and hardy deeds of arms with, which 
the youthful Count of Castile had commenced his reign excited 
the admiration of Alfonso the Great, King of Leon, and he 
sent missives urging him to appear at his royal court. The 
count accordingly set forth with a cavalcade of his most ap¬ 
proved knights and many of his relatives, sumptuously armed 
and arrayed, and mounted on steeds richly caparisoned. It 
was a pageant befitting a young and magnificent chief, in the 
freshness and pleasance of his years. 


14 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


The king came out of the city to meet him, attended by all 
the pomp and grandeur of his court. The count alighted, and 
approached to kiss the king’s hand; but Alfonso alighted also, 
and embraced him with great affection, and the friendship of 
these illustrious princes continued without interruption 
throughout the life of the king. 


CHAPTER III. 

EXPEDITION AGAINST THE FORTRESS OF MUGNON.—DESPERATE DE¬ 
FENCE OF THE MOORS.—ENTERPRISE AGAINST CASTRO XERIZ. 

Many are the doughty achievements recorded in ancient 
chronicles of this most valorous cavalier; among others is his 
expedition, with a chosen band, against the castle of Mugnon, 
a place of great importance, which stood at no great distance 
from Burgos. He sallied from his capital in an opposite direc¬ 
tion, to delude the Moorish scouts; but making a sudden turn, 
came upon the fortress by surprise, broke down the gates, and 
forced his way in at the head of his troops, having nothing but 
a dagger in his hand, his lance and sword having been broken 
in the assault. The Moors fought desperately from court to 
tower, from tower to wall; and when they saw all resistance 
vain, many threw themselves from the battlements into the 
ditch rather than be made captives. Leaving a strong garri¬ 
son in the place, the count returned to Burgos. 

His next enterprise was against Castro Xeriz, a city with a 
strong castle, which had been a thorn in the side of Castile— 
the Moorish garrison often sweeping the road between Bur¬ 
gos and Leon, carrying off travellers, capturing cattle, and 
plundering convoys of provisions and merchandise. The count 
advanced against this place in open day, ravaging the country 
and announcing his approach by clouds of smoke from the 
burning habitations of the Moors. Abdallah, the alcaid of the 
fortress, would have made peace, but the count refused all 
terms. “ God,” ^aid he, “has appointed me to rescue his holy 
inheritance from the power of infidels; nothing is to be ne¬ 
gotiated but by the edge of the sword.” 

Abdallah then made a sally with a chosen band of his cava¬ 
liers. They at first careered lightly with their Arabian steeds 



CIIRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ, 


15 


and launched their Moorisn darts, hut the Christians closed in 
the old Gothic style, fighting hand to hand. Abdallah fell by 
the sword of the count, and his followers fled with loosened 
reins back to the city. The Christians followed hard upon 
them, strewing the ground with dead. At the gate of the city 
they were met by Almondir, the son of Abdallah, who disputed 
the gateway and the street inch by inch, until the whole placo 
ran with blood. The Moors, driven from the streets, took 
refuge in the castle, where Almondir inspirited them to a 
desperate defence, until a stone struck him as he stood on the 
battlements, and he fell to the earth dead. Having no leader 
to direct them, the Moors surrendered. When the town was 
cleared of the dead and order restored, the count divided the 
spoils—allotting the houses among his followers, and peopling 
the place with Christians. He gave the command of it to 
Layn Bermudez, with the title of count. From him descended 
an illustrious line of cavaliers termed de Castro, whose male 
line became extinct in Castile, but continued to flourish in 
Portugal. The place is said to have been called Castro Xeriz, 
in consequence of the blood shed in this conflict—xeriz, in the 
Arabic language signifying bloody.* 


CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE COUNT OF CASTILE AND THE KING OF LEON MAKES 
TRIUMPHANT FORAY INTO THE MOORISH COUNTRY.— CAPTURE 
OF SALAMANCA.—OF THE CHALLENGE BROUGHT BY THE HER¬ 
ALD AND OF THE COUNT’S DEFIANCE. 

Count Fernan Gonzalez was restless, daring, and impet¬ 
uous ; he seldom suffered lance to rest on wall or steed in sta¬ 
ble, and no Moorish commander could sleep in quiet who held 
town or tower in his neighborhood. King Alfonso the Great 
became emulous of sharing in his achievements, and they made 
a campaign together against the Moors. The count brought a 
splendid array of Castilian chivalry into the field, together 
with a host of Montaneses, hardy and vigorous troops from the 
Asturias, excellent for marauding warfare. The King of Leon 


* Sandoval, p. 301. 






16 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


brought his veteran bands, seasoned to battle. With their 
united forces they ravaged the Moorish country, marking their 
way with havoc and devastation; arrived before Salamanca, 
they took that city by storm after a brave defence, and gave 
it up to be sacked by the soldiery. After which such of the 
Moors as chose to remain in it were suffered to retain their pos¬ 
sessions as vassals to the king. Having accomplished this 
triumphant foray, they returned, each one to his capital. 

The Count of Castile did not repose long in his palace. One 
day a Moorish herald magnificently dressed, rode into the city 
of Burgos, bringing Fernan Gonzalez a cartel of defiance. It 
was from a vaunting Moor named Acefeli, who had entered the 
territories of Castile with a powerful force of horse and foot, 
giving out that he had come to measure strength and prowess 
with the count in battle. Don Fernan Gonzalez replied to the 
defiance with weapon in hand at the head of his warriors. A 
pitched battle ensued, which lasted from early morn until 
evening twilight. In the course of the fight the count was in 
imminent peril, his horse being killed under him and himself 
surrounded, but he was rescued by his cavaliers. After great 
bloodshed, the Moors were routed and pursued beyond the bor¬ 
ders. The spoil gained in this battle was devoutly expended 
in repairing the churches of Castile and the Montaneses. 


CHAPTER V. 

A NIGHT ASSAULT UPON THE CASTLE OF CARAZO.—THE MOORISH 
MAIDEN WHO BETRAYED THE GARRISON. 

In those warlike times of Spain every one lived with sword 
in hand; there was scarcely a commanding cliff or hill-top but 
had its castle. Moors and Christians regarded each other from 
rival towers and battlements perched on opposite heights, and 
were incessantly contending for the dominion of the valleys. 

We have seen that Count Fernan Gonzalez had regained pos¬ 
session of the ancient town and fortress of Lara, the domain 
of his ancestors; but it will be recollected that within two 
leagues’ distance stood the Moorish presidio of Carazo. It was 
perched like an eagle’s nest on the summit of a mountain, and 
the cragged steepness of its position, and its high and thick 



. CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


17 


walls seemed to render it proof against all assault. The Moors 
who garrisoned it were fierce marauders, who used to sweep 
down like birds of prey from their lofty nest, pounce upon the 
flocks and dwellings of the Christians, make hasty ravages, 
and bear away their spoils to the mountain-top. There was no 
living with safety or tranquillity within the scope of their ma¬ 
raudings. 

Intelligence of their misdeeds was brought to the count at 
Burgos. He determined to have that castle at Carazo, what¬ 
ever might be the cost; for this purpose lie called a council of 
his chosen cavaliers. He did not conceal the peril of the enter¬ 
prise, from the crag-built situation of the castle, its great 
strength, and the vigilance and valor of its garrison. Still the 
Castilian cavaliers offered themselves to carry the fortress or 
die. 

The count sailed secretly from Burgos with a select force, 
and repaired in the night-time to Lara, that the Moors might 
have no intimation or suspicion of his design. In the midst of 
the nex«t night, the castle-gat© was quietly opened and they is¬ 
sued forth as silently as possible, pursuing their course in the 
deep shadows of the valley until they came to the foot of the 
mountain of Carazo. Here they remained in ambush, and 
sent forth scouts. As the latter prowled about the day began 
to dawn, and they heard a female voice singing above them on 
the side of the mountain. It was a Moorish damsel coming 
down, with a vessel upon her head. She descended to a foun¬ 
tain which gushed forth beneath a grove of willows, and as she 
sang she began to fill her vessel with water. The spies issued 
from their concealment, seized her, and carried her to Count 
Fernan Gonzalez. 

Overcome by terror or touched by conviction, the Moorish 
damsel threw herself on her knees before the count, declared 
her wish to turn Christian, and offered, in proof of her sim 
cerity, to put him in a way of gaining possession of the castle. 
Being encouraged to proceed, she told him that there was to be 
a marriage feast that day in the castle, and of course a great 
deal of revelry, which would put the garrison off its guard. 
She pointed out a situation where he might lay in ambush with 
his troops in sight of the tower, and promised when a favorable 
moment presented for an attack to give a signal with a light. 

The count regarded her for a time with a fixed and earnest 
gaze, but saw no faltering nor change of countenance. The 
case required bold measures, combined with stratagem; so he 


18 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


confided in her, and permitted her to return to the castle. All 
day he lay in ambush with his troops, each man with his 
hand upon his weapon to guard against surprise. The distant 
sound of revelry from the castle, with now and then the 
clash of cymbals, the bray of trumpets, and a strain of festive 
music, showed the gaiety that reigned within. Night came 
on; lights gleamed from walls and windows, but none resem¬ 
bling the appointed signal. It was almost midnight, and the 
count began to fear the Moorish damsel had deceived him, 
when to his great joy he saw the signal light gleaming from 
one of the towers. 

He now sallied forth with his men, and all, on foot, clam¬ 
bered up the steep and rugged height. They had almost 
attained the foot of the towers when they were descried by a 
sentinel who cried with a loud voice, “The foe! the foe! to 
arms! to arms!” The count, followed by his hardy cavaliers, 
rushed forward to the gate, crying, ‘ ‘ God and Saint Millan!” 
The whole castle was instantly in an uproar. The Moors 
were bewildered by the sudden surprise and the confusion of 
a night assault. They fought bravely, but irregularly. The 
Christians had but one plan and one object. After a hard 
struggle and great bloodshed, they forced the gate and made 
themselves masters of the castle. 

The count remained several days, fortifying the place and 
garrisoning it, that it might not fall again into the possession 
of the Moors. He bestowed magnificent rewards on the Moor¬ 
ish damsel who had thus betrayed her countrymen; she em¬ 
braced the Christian faith, to which she had just given such a 
signal proof of devotion, though it is not said whether the 
count had sufficient confidence in her conversion and her 
neAvly moulded piety to permit her to remain in the fortress 
she had betrayed. 

Having completed his arrangements, the count departed on 
his return, and encountered on the road his mother Dona 
Nuna Fernandez, who, exulting in his success, had set out 
to visit him at Carazo. The mother and son had a joyful 
meeting, and gave the name of Contreras to the place of their 
encounter. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


19 


CHAPTER VI. 

DEATH OF ALFONSO, KING OF LEON.—THE MOORS DETERMINED 
TO STRIKE A FRESH BLOW AT THE COUNT, WHO SUMMONS ALL 
CASTILE TO HIS STANDARD.—OF HIS HUNT IN THE FOREST 
WHILE WAITING FOR THE ENEMY, AND OF THE HERMIT THAT 
HE MET WITH. 

Alfonso the Great was now growing old and infirm, 
and his queen and sons, taking advantage of his age and 
feebleness, endeavored by harsh treatment to compel him to 
relinquish the crown. Count Fernan Gonzalez interceded 
between them, but in vain; and Alfonso was at length obliged 
to surrender his crown to his oldest son, Don Garcia. The 
aged monarch then set out upon a pilgrimage to the shrine of 
St. Iago; but, falling ill of his mortal malady, sent for the 
count to come to him to his death -bed at Zamora. The count 
hastened thither with all zeal and loyalty. He succeeded in 
effecting a reconciliation between Alfonso and his son Don 
Garcia in his dying moments, and was with the monarch 
when he quietly breathed his last. The death of the king gave 
fresh courage to the Moors, and they thought this a favorable 
moment to strike a blow at the rising power of the count. 
Abderahman was at this time king of Cordova and Miramam- 
olin, or sovereign of the Moors in Spain. He had been enraged 
at the capture of the castle of Carazo, and the other victories 
of the count; and now that the latter had no longer the King 
of Leon to back him, it was thought he might, by a vigorous 
effort, be completely crushed. Abderahman accordingly as¬ 
sembled at Cordova a great army of Moorish warriors, both 
those of Spain and Africa, and sent them, under the command 
of Almanzor, to ravage the country of Count Fernan Ganzalez. 
This Almanzor was the most valiant Moorish general in Spain, 
and one on whom Abderahman depended as upon his right 
hand. 

On hearing of the impending danger, Count Fernan Gonzalez 
summoned all men of Castile capable of bearing arms to repair 
to his standard at Muhon. His force when assembled was but 
small, but composed of the bravest chivalry of Castile, any 
one night of which he esteemed equal to ten Moors. One of 


20 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


the most eminent of his cavaliers was Don Gonzalo Gustios, of 
Lara, who brought seven valiant sons to the field—the same 
afterward renowned in Spanish story as the seven princes of 
Lara. With Don Gonzalo came also his wife’s brother, Ruy or 
Rodrigo Velasquez, a cavalier of great powers. 

In the meantime tidings continued to arrive of the great 
force of the enemy, which was said to cover the country with 
its tents. The name of the Moorish general, Almanzor, like¬ 
wise inspired great alarm. One of the count’s cavaliers, there¬ 
fore, Gonzalo Diaz, counselled him not to venture upon an 
open battle against such fearful odds; but rather to make a 
tula, or ravaging inroad into the country of the Moors, by way 
of compelling them to make a truce. The count, however, re¬ 
jected his advice. “As to their numbers, ” said he, “ one lion 
is worth ten sheep, and thirty wolves will kill thirty thousand 
lambs. As to that Moor, Almanzor, be assured we shall van¬ 
quish him, and the greater his renown the greater will be the 
honor of the victoiy.” 

The count now marched his little army to Lara, where he 
paused to await the movements of the enemy. While his 
troops were lying there he mounted his horse one day and 
went forth with a few attendants to hunt in the forests which 
bordered the river Arlanza. In the course of the chase he 
roused a monstrous boar and pursued it among rocks and 
brakes until he became separated from his attendants. Still 
following the track of the boar, he came to the foot of a rocky 
precipice, up which the animal mounted by a rugged and nar¬ 
row path, where the horse could not follow. The count 
alighted, tied his horse to an oak, and clambered up the path, 
assisting himself at times with his boar-spear. The path led 
to a close thicket of cedars,, surrounding a small edifice partly 
built of stone and partly hewn out of the solid rock. The boar 
had taken refuge within, and had taken his stand behind what 
appeared to he a mass of stone. The count was about to launch 
his javelin when he beheld a cross of stone standing on what 
now perceived was an altar, and he knew that he was in a 
holy place. Being as pious as he was brave, the good count 
now knelt before the altar and asked pardon of God for the 
sin he had been on the point of committing; and when he had 
finished this prayer, he added another for victory over the 
foe. 

While he was yet praying, there entered a venerable monk, 
Pray Pela.vo by name, who, seeing him to be a Christian 


CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 21 

knight, gave him his benediction. He informed the count that 
he resided in this hermitage in company with two other monks 
—Arsenio and Silvano. The count marvelled much how they 
could live there in a country overrun by enemies, and which 
had for a long time, and but recently, been in the power of the 
infidels. The hermit replied that in the service of God they 
were ready to endure all hardships. It is true they suffered 
much from cold and hunger, being obliged to live chiefly on 
herbs and roots; but by secret paths and tracks they were in 
communication with other hermitages scattered throughout 
the country, so that they were enabled to aid and comfort each 
other. They could also secretly sustain in the faith the Chris¬ 
tians who were held in subjection by the Moors, and afford 
them places of refuge and concealment in cases of extremity. 

The count now opened his heart to the good hermit, revealing 
his name and rank, and the perils impending over him from 
the invasion of the infidel. As the day was far spent, Fray 
Pelayo prevailed upon him to pass the night in the hermitage, 
setting before him barley bread and such simple fare as his 
cell afforded. 

Early in the morning the count went forth and found the 
hermit seated beneath a tree on a rock, whence he could look 
far and wide out of the forest and over the surrounding country. 
The hermit then accosted him as one whose holy and medi¬ 
tative life and mortifications of the flesh had given to look into 
the future almost with the eye of prophecy. “ Of a truth, my 
son,’’ said he, “there are many trials and hardships instore 
for thee; but be of good cheer, thou wilt conquer these Moors, 
and wilt increase thy power and possessions.” He now re¬ 
vealed to the count certains signs and portents which would 
take place during battle. “ When thou shalt see these,” said 
he, “be assured that Heaven is on thy side, and thy victory 
secure.” The count listened with devout attention. “ If these 
things do indeed come to pass,” said he, “I will foimd a church 
and convent in this place, to be dedicated to St. Peter, the 
patron saint of this hermitage; and when I die. my body shall 
be interred here. ” Receiving then the benediction of the holy 
friar he departed. 


22 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE BATTLE OF THE FORD OF CASCAJARES. 

When Count Fernan Gonzalez returned to his troops he 
found them in great alarm at his absence, fearing some evil 
had befallen him; but he cheered them with an account of his 
adventure and of the good fortune predicted by the hermit. 

It was in the month of May, on the day of the Holy Cross, 
that the Christian and Moslem armies came in sight of each 
other. The Moors advanced with a great sound of trumpets, 
atabals, and cymbals, and their mighty host extended over 
hill and valley. When they saw how small was the force of 
the Christians they put up derisive shouts, and rushed forward 
to surround them. 

Don Fernan Gonzalez remained calm and unmoved upon a 
rising ground, for the hour was at hand when the sign of vic¬ 
tory promised by the hermit was to take place. Near by him 
was a youthful cavalier, Pedro Gonzalez by name, a native of 
La Puente de Hitero, of fiery courage but vainglorious temper. 
He was cased in shining armor, and mounted on a beautiful 
horse impatient of spirit as himself, and incessantly foaming 
and champing on the bit and pawing the earth. As the Moors 
drew near, while there was yet a large space between them and 
the Christians, this fiery cavalier could no longer contain 
himself, but giving reins to his steed set off headlong to en¬ 
counter the foe; when suddenly the earth opened, man and 
horse rushed downward into an abyss, and the earth closed as 
before. 

A cry of horror ran through the Christian ranks, and a 
panic was likely to seize upon them, but Don Fernan Gonzalez 
rode out in front of them, exclaiming, 4 ‘ This is the promised 
sign of victory. Let us see how Castilians defend their lord, 
for my standard shall be borne into the thickest of the fight.” 
So saying, he ordered Orbita Fernandez to advance his stan¬ 
dard ; and when his troops saw the silver cross glittering on 
high and borne toward the enemy, they shouted, “Castile! 
Castile!” and rushed forward to the fight. Immediately 
around the standard fought Don Gonzalo Gustiosand his seven 
sons, and he was, say the old chroniclers, like a lion leading 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ . 


23 


his whelps into the fight. Wherever they fought their way, 
they might be traced by the bodies of bleeding and expiring 
infidels. Few particulars of this battle remain on record; but 
it is said the Moors were as if struck with sudden fear and 
weakness, and fled in confusion. Almanzor himself escaped 
by the speed of his horse, attended by a handful of his cava¬ 
liers. 

In the camp of the Moors was found vast booty in gold and 
silver, and other precious things, with sumptuous armor and 
weapons. When the spoil was divided and the troops were re¬ 
freshed, Don Fernan Gonzalez went with his cavaliers in pious 
procession to the hermitage of San Pedro. Here he gave much 
silver and gold to the worthy Fray Pelayo, to be expended in 
masses for the souls of the Christian warriors who had fallen in 
battle, and in prayers for further victories over the infidels; 
after which he returned in triumph to his capital in Burgos.* 


CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE MESSAGE SENT BY THE COUNT TO SANCHO H., KING OF 
NAVARRE, AND THE REPLY.—THEIR ENCOUNTER IN BATTLE. 

The good Count of Castile was so inspirited by this signal 
victory over the Moors, and their great general Almanzor, 
that he determined, now that he had a breathing-spell from 


* it does not appear tliat Count Fernan Gonzalez kept his promise of founding a 
church and monastery on the site of the hermitage. The latter edifice remained to 
after ages. “It stands,” says Sandoval, “on a precipice overhanging the river 
Arlanza, insomuch that it inspires dread to look below. It is extremely ancient; 
large enough to hold a hundred persons. Within the chapel is an opening like a 
chasm, leading down to a cavern larger than the church, formed in the solid rock, 
with a small window which overlooks the river. It was here the Christians used to 
conceal themselves.” 

As a corroboration of the adventure of the Count of Castile, Sandoval assures us 
that in his day the oak still existed to which Don Fernan Gonzalez tied his horse, 
when he alighted to scramble up the hill in pursuit of the boar. The worthy Fray 
Agapida, however, needed no corroboration of the kind, swallowing the whole story 
with the ready credence of a pious monk. The action here recorded was known 
by the name of the battle of the Ford of Cascajares. 

Sandoval gives a different account of the fate of the hermits. He says that Al¬ 
manzor, in a, rage at their prognostics, overthrew their chapel, and, without alight¬ 
ing from his horse, ordered the three monks to be beheaded in his presence. “ This 
martyrdom,” he adds, “ is represented in an ancient painting of the chapel which 
still exists.” 




24 


^ MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Infidel warfare, to redress certain grievances sustained from 
one of his Christian neighbors. This was Don Sancho II., 
King of Navarre, surnamed Abarca, either from the abarcas or 
shepherd-shoes which he had worn in early life, when brought 
up in secrecy and indigence, during the overthrow of his coun¬ 
try by the Moors, or from making his soldiers wear shoes of 
the kind in crossing the snowy Pyrenees. It was a name by 
which the populace delighted to call him. 

This prince had recovered all Navarre from the infidels, and 
even subjected to his crown all Biscay, or Cantabria, and some 
territory beyond the Pyrenees, on the confines of France. Not 
content with these acquisitions, he had made occasional in¬ 
roads into Castile, in consequence of a contest respecting the 
territories of Najarra and Eioxa, to which he laid claim. 
These incursions he repeated whenever he had peace or truce 
with the Moors.* 

Count Fernan Gonzalez, having now time, as has been ob¬ 
served, to attend to these matters, sent an ambassador to 
King Sancho, charged with a courteous but resolute message. 
“I come, Senor,” said the ambassador to the king, “by com¬ 
mand of the Count Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, and this is 
what I am told to say. You have done him much wrong in 
times past, by leaguing with the infidels and making inroads 
into his territories while he was absent or engaged in war. If 
you will amend your ways in this respect, and remedy the 
past, you will do him much pleasure; but if you refuse, he 
sends you his defiance.” 

King Sancho Abarca was lost in astonishment and indigna* 
tion at receiving such a message from a count of Castile. 
“ Return to the count,” said he, “and tell him I will amend 
nothing; that I marvel at his insolence, and hold him for a 
madman for daring to defy me. Tell him he has listened to 
evil counsel, or a few trifling successes against the Moors have 
turned his brain; but it will be very different when I come to 
seek him, for there is not town or tower from which I will not 
drag him forth.” f 

The ambassador returned with this reply, nor did he spare 
the least of its scorn and bitterness. Upon this the count as¬ 
sembled his cavaliers and councillors, and represented the 


* Sandoval: The Five Bishops. Mariana, lib. 8, c. 5, p. 3G7. Cron. Gen. de Ea 
paria, part 3, c. 18, fol. 53. 
t Cron. Gen. de Espafia, ut supra. 



CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


25 


case. He exhorted them to stand by him in seeking redress 
for this insult and injury to their country and their chieftain. 
“We are not equal in numbers to the enemy, but we are va¬ 
liant men, united and true to each other, and one hundred 
good lances, all in the hands of chosen cavaliers, all of one 
heart and mind, are worth three hundred placed by chance in 
the hands of men who have no common tie.” The cavaliers 
all assured him they would follow and obey him as loyal sub¬ 
jects of a worthy lord, and would prove their fealty in the day 
of battle. 

A little army of staunch Castilians was soon assembled, the 
silver cross was again reared on high by the standard-bearer 
Orbita Velasquez, and the coimt advanced resolutely a day's 
journey into the kingdom of Navarre, for his maxim was to 
strike quickly and sudden. King Sancho wondered at his dar¬ 
ing, but hastened to meet him with a greatly superior force. 
The armies came in sight of each other at a place called the 
Era de Gollanda. 

The count now addressed his men. “The enemy,” said he, 
“ are more numerous than we; they are vigorous of body and 
light of foot, and are dexterous in throwing darts. They will 
have the advantage if they attack us; but if we attack them 
and close manfully, shall get the field of them before they 
have time to hurl their darts and wound us. For my part, I 
shall make for the king. If I can but revenge the wrongs of 
Castile upon his person I care not how soon I die.” 

As the armies drew near each other the Castilians, true to 
the orders of their chieftain, put up the war cry, “Castile! 
Castile?” and rushing forward, broke through the squadrons of 
Navarre. Then followed a fight so pitiless and deadly, says an 
old chronicler, that the strokes of their weapons resounded 
through the whole country. The count sought King Sancho 
throughout the whole field; they met and recognized each 
other by their armorial bearings and devices. They fought 
with fury, until both fell from their horses as if dead. The 
Castilians cut their way through the mass of the enemy, and 
surrounded their fallen chief. Some raised him* from the 
earth while others kept off the foe. At first they thought him 
dead, and were loud in their lamentations; but when the blood 
and dust were wiped from his face he revived and told them 
not to heed him, for his wounds were nothing; but to press 
on and gain the victory, for he had slain the King of Navarre. 

At hearing this they gave a great shout and returned to the 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


26 

fight; but those of Navarre, seized with terror at the fall of 
their king, turned their backs and fled. 

The count then caused the body of the king to be taken from 
among the slain and to be conducted, honorably attended, to 
Navarre. Thus fell Sancho Abarca, King of Navarre, and was 
succeeded by his son Don Garcia, surnamed the Trembler. 


CHAPTER IX. 

HOW THE COUNT OF TOULOUSE MAKES A CAMPAIGN AGAINST 
CASTILE, AND HOW HE RETURNS IN HIS COFFIN. 

While the Coimt Fernan Gonzalez was yet ill of his wounds 
in his capital, and when his soldiers had scarce laid by their 
cuirasses and hung up their shields and lances, there was a 
fresh alarm of war. The Count of Toulouse and Poictiers, the 
close friend and ally of King Sancho Abarca, had come from 
France with a host to his assistance, but finding him defeated 
and slain, raised his standard to make a campaign, in his re¬ 
venge, against the Castilians. The Navarrese all gathered 
round him, and now an army was on foot more powerful than 
the one which had recently been defeated. 

Count Fernan Gonzalez, wounded as he was, summoned his 
troops to march against this new enemy; but the war-worn 
Castilians, vexed at being thus called again to arms before 
they had time to breathe, began to murmur. “This is the 
life of the very devil,” said they “to go about day and night, 
without a moment’s rest. This lord of ours is assuredly Sa¬ 
tan himself, and we are lesser devils in his employ, always 
busy entrapping the souls of men. He has no pity for us so 
battered and worn, nor for himself, so badly wounded. It is 
necessary that some one should talk with him, and turn 
him from this madness.” 

Accordingly a hardy cavalier, Nuho Laynez, remonstrated 
with the count against further fighting until he should be 
cured of his wounds and his people should have time to repose; 
for mortal men could not support this kind of life. “Nor is 
this urged through cowardice,” added he, “ for your men are 
ready to fight for and defend you as they would their own 
souls.” 



CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


27 


“Well have you spoken, Nuno Laynez,” replied the count; 
“ yet for all this I am not minded to defer this fight. A day 
lost never returns. An opportunity foregone can never be 
recalled. The worrior who indulges in repose will never leave 
the memory of great deeds behind him. His name dies when 
his soul leaves the body. Let us, therefore, make the most of 
the days and hours allotted us, and crown them with such 
glorious deeds that the world shall praise us in all future time.” 

When Nuno Laynez repeated these generous words to the 
cavaliers, the blooa giowed in their veins, and they prepared 
themselves manfully for the field; nor did the count give them 
time to cool before he put himself at their head and marched 
to meet the enemy. He found them drawn up on the opposite 
side of a river which was swollen and troubled by recent 
rains. Without hesitation he advanced to ford it, but his 
troops were galled by flights of darts and arrows as they 
crossed, and received with lances on the water’s edge; the 
bodies of many floated down the turbid stream, and many 
perished on the banks. They made good their crossing, how¬ 
ever, and closed with the enemy. The fight was obstinate, 
and the Castilians were hardly pressed, being so inferior in 
number. Don Fernan Gonzalez galloped along the front of 
the enemy. “Where is the Count of Toulouse?” cried he; 
“ let him come forth and face me,—me, Fernan Gonzalez of 
Castille, who defy him to single combat!” The count answered 
promptly to the defiance. No one from either side presumed 
to interfere while the two counts encountered, man to man 
and horse to horse, like honorable and generous cavaliers. 
They rushed upon each other with the full speed of their 
horses; the lance of Don Fernan pierced through all the 
armor and accoutrements of the Count of Toulouse and bore 
him out of the saddle, and before he touched the earth his 
soul had already parted from his body. The men of Toulouse, 
seeing their chief fall dead, fled amain, but were pursued, and 
three hundred of them taken.”* 

The field being won, Count Fernan Gonzalez alighted and 
took off the armor of the Count of Toulouse with his own 
hands, and wrapped him in a xemete, or Moorish mantle, of 
great value, which he had gained when he conquered Alman- 
zor. He ordered a coffin to be made, and covered with cloth 
of gold, and studded with silver nails, and he put therein the 


* Cron. Gen. de Espana. 



28 


MOORISH CHRONICLES . 


body of the count, and delivered it to the captive cavaliers, 
whom he released and furnished with money for their ex¬ 
penses, making them swear not to leave the body of the 
count until they had conducted it to Toulouse. So the count 
who had come from France in such chivalrous state, at the 
head of an array of shining warriors, returned in his cokin 
with a mourning train of vanquished cavaliers, while Count 
Fernan Gonzalez conducted his victorious troops in triumph 
back to Burgos. 

This signal victory took place in the year of our Redemption 
92G, in the beginning of the reign of Alfonso the Monk on the, 
throne of Leon and the Asturias.* 


CHAPTER X. 

HOW THE COUNT WENT TO RECEIVE THE HAND OF A PRINCESS, 
AND WAS THROWN INTO A DUNGEON. — OF THE STRANGER 
THAT VISITED HIM IN HIS CHAINS, AND OF THE APPEAL THAT 
HE MADE TO THE PRINCESS FOR HIS DELIVERANCE. 

Garcia II., who had succeeded to the throne of Navarre on 
the death of his father, was brave of soul, though surnamed El 
Tembloso, or The Trembler. He was so called because he was 
observed to tremble on going into battle; but, as has been said 
of others, it was only the flesh that trembled, foreseeing the 
dangers into which the spirit would carry it. The king was 
deeply grieved at the death of his father, slain by Count 
Fernan Gonzalez, and would have taken vengeance by open 
warfare, but he was counselled by his mother, the Queen 
Teresa, to puisue a subtler course. At her instigation over¬ 
tures were made to the count to settle ail the feuds between 
Navarre and Castile by a firm alliance, and to this end it was 
proposed that the count should take to wife Dona Sancha, the 
sister of Ling Garcia and daughter of King Sancho Abarca. 
The count accepted gladly the proffered alliance, for he had 
heard of the great merit and beauty of the princess, and was 
pleased with so agreeable a mode of putting an end to all their 
contests. A conference was accordingly appointed between 


* Mariana, lib. 8, c. 5, p. 367. 






CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 29 

the count and King Garcia, to take place at Ciruera, each to 
be attended only by five cavaliers. 

The count was faithful to his compact, and appeared at the 
appointed place with five of the bravest of his cavaliers; but 
the king arrived with five-and-thirty chosen men, all armed 
cap-a-pie. The count, suspecting treachery, retreated with 
his cavaliers into a neighboring hermitage, and, barricading 
the door, defended himself throughout the day until night¬ 
fall. Seeing there was no alternative, he at length capitulated 
and agreed to surrender himself a prisoner, and pay homage 
to the king, on the latter assuring him, under oath, that his 
life should be secure. King Garcia the Trembler, having in 
this wily manner gained possession of the count, threw him in 
irons and conducted him prisoner to Navarre, where he con- 
fined'diim in a strong castle called Castro Viejo. At his 
intercession, however, his five cavaliers were released, and 
carried back to Castile the doleful tidings of his captivity. 

Now it came to pass that a brave Norman count, who was 
performing a pilgrimage to St. Iago of Compostella, heard that 
the Count Fernan Gonzalez, whose renown had spread far and 
wide, lay in chains in Castro Viejo. Having a vehement de¬ 
sire to see the man of whom fame had spoken so loudly, he re¬ 
paired to the castle, and bribed his way to the prison of the 
count. When he entered and beheld so noble a cavalier in a 
solitary dungeon and in chains, he was sore at heart. The 
count looked up with wonder as this stranger stood before him 
in pilgrim garb and with sorrowful aspect, but when he learned 
his name and rank, and the object of his visit, he gave him 
the right hand of friendship. 

The pilgrim count left the castle more enamored than ever of 
the character of Count Fernan Gonzalez. At a festival of the 
court he beheld the Princess Sancha, who had served as a lure 
to draw the good count into the power of his enemies, and he 
found her of surpassing beauty, and of a gentle and loving de¬ 
meanor; so he determined to seek an opportunity to speak 
with her in private, for surely, thought he, in such a bosom 
must dwell the soft pity of womanhood. Accordingly, one day 
as the princess was walking in the garden with her ladies, he 
presented himself before her in his pilgrim’s garb, and prayed 
to speak with her apart, as if on some holy mission. And when 
they were alone, “How is this, Princess,” said he, “that you 
are doing such great wrong to Heaven, to yourself, and to all 
Christendom ?” The princess started, and said, “What wrong 


30 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


have I done?” Then replied the pilgrim count, “Behold, for 
thy sake the noblest of cavaliers, the pride of Spain, the flower 
of chivalry, the hope of Christendom, lies in a dungeon, fettered 
with galling chains. What lady but would be too happy to be 
honored with the love of Count Fernan Gonzalez; and thou 
hast scorned it! How will it tell for thy fame in future times, 
that thou wast made a snare to capture an honorable knight; 
that the gentlest, the bravest, the most generous of cavaliers 
was inveigled by the love of thee to be thrown into a dungeon? 
How hast thou reversed the maxims of chivalry! Beauty has 
ever been the friend of valor; but thou hast been its foe! The 
fair hands of lovely dames have ever bestowed laurels and re¬ 
wards on those gallant knights who sought and deserved their 
loves; thou hast bestowed chains and a dungeon. Behold, the 
Moors rejoice in his captivity, while all Christians mourn. 
Thy name will be accursed throughout the land like that of 
Cava; but shouldst thou have the heroism to set him free, thou 
wilt be extolled above all Spanish ladies. Hadst thou but seen 
him as I have done,—alone, abandoned, enchained; yet so no¬ 
ble, so courteous, so heroic in his chains, that kings upon their 
thrones might envy the majesty of his demeanor. If thou 
couldst feel love for man, thou shouldst do it for this knight; 
for I swear to thee on this cross which I bear, that never was 
there king or emperor in the world so worthy of woman’s 
love.” When the pilgrim count had thus spoken, he left the 
princess to meditate upon his words. 


CHAPTER XI. 

OF THE MEDITATIONS OF THE PRINCESS, AND THEIR RESULT. — 
HER FLIGHT FROM THE PRISON WITH THE COUNT, AND PERILS 
OF THE ESCAPE. —THE NUPTIALS. 

The Princess Sancha remained for some time in the garden, 
revolving in her mind all that she had just heard, and tender¬ 
ness for the Count Fernan Gonzalez began to awaken in her 
bosom; for nothing so touches the heart of woman as the idea 
of valor suffering for her sake. The more the princess medi¬ 
tated the more she became enamored. She called to mind all 
she had heard of the illustrious actions of the count. She 



CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


31 


thought upon the pictures just drawn of nun in prison—so 
noble, so majestic in his chains. She remembered the parting 
words of the pilgrim count— ‘ ‘ Never was there king nor emperor 
so worthy of a woman’s love.” “ Alas!” cried she, “was there 

ever a lady more unfortunate than I? All the love and devo* 
tion of this noble cavalier I might have had, and behold it has 
been made a mockery. Both he and myself have been wronged 
by the treachery of my brother.” 

At length the passion of the princess arose to such a height 
that she determined to deliver the count from the misery of 
which she had been the instrument. So she found means one 
night to bribe the guards of his prison, and. made her way to 
his dungeon. When the count saw her, he thought it a beauti¬ 
ful vision, or some angel sent from heaven to comfort him, for 
certainly her beauty surpassed the ordinary loveliness of 
woman. 

“ Noble cavalier,” said the princess, “ this is no time for idle 
words and ceremonies. Behold before you the Princess Dona 
Sanclia; the w r ord which my brother brake I am here to fulfil. 
You came to receive my hand, and, instead, you were thrown 
in chains. I come to yield you that hand, and to deliver you 
from those chains. Behold, the door of your prison is open, 
and I am ready to fly with you to the ends of the earth. Swear 
to me one word, and when you have sworn it, I know your 
loyalty too well to doubt that you will hold your oath sacred. 
Swear that if I fly with you, you will treat me with the honor 
of a knight; that you will make me your wife, and never leave 
me for any other woman.” 

The count swore all this on the faith of a Christian cavalier; 
and well did he feel disposed to keep his oath, for never before 
had he beheld such glorious beauty. 

So the princess led the way, for her authority and her money 
had conquered the fidelity of the guards, so that they permitted 
the count to sally forth with her from the prison. 

It was a dark night, and they left the great road and climbed 
a mountain. The count was so fettered by his chains that he 
moved with difficulty, but the princess helped and sometimes 
almost carried him; for what will not delicate woman perform 
when her love and pity are fully aroused. Thus they toiled on 
their way until the day dawned, when they hid themselves in 
the clifts of the mountain, among rocks and thickets, Whil® 
thus concealed they beheld an archpriest of the castle, mounted 
on a mule with a falcon on his fist, hawking about the lower 


32 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


part of the mountain. The count knew him to be a base and 
malignant man, and watched his movements with great anxiety. 
He had two hounds beating about the bushes, which at length 
got upon the traces of the count and princess, and discovering 
them, set up a violent barking. ^Alighting from his mule, the 
archpriest clambered up to where the fugitives were concealed. 
He knew the count, and saw that he had escaped. “Aha! 
traitor,” cried he, drawing his sword, “think not to escape 
from the power of the king.” The count saw that resistance 
was in vain, for he was without weapon and in chains, and the 
archpriest was a powerful man, exceeding broad across the 
shoulders; he sought therefore to win him by fair words, prom¬ 
ising that if he would aid him to escape he would give him a 
city in Castile, for him and his heirs forever. But the arch¬ 
priest was more violent than ever, and held his sword at the 
breast of the count to force him back to the castle. Upon this 
the princess rushed forward, and with tears in her eyes im¬ 
plored him not to deliver the count into the hands of his ene¬ 
mies. But the heart of the priest was inflamed by the beauty 
of the princess, and thinking her at his mercy, “Gladly,” said 
he, ‘ ‘ will I assist the count to escape, but upon one condition. 
Then he whispered a proposal which brought a crimson glow 
of horror and indignation into the cheeks of the princess, and 
he would have laid his hand upon her, but he was suddenly 
lifted from the earth by the strong grasp of the count, who 
bore him to the edge of a precipice and flung him headlong 
down; and his neck was broken in the fall. 

The count then took the mule of the archpriest, his hawk, 
and his hounds, and after keeping in the secret parts of the 
mountain all day, he and the princess mounted the mule at 
night, and pursued their way, by the most rugged and unfre¬ 
quented passes, toward Castile. 

As the day dawned they found themselves in an open plain 
at the foot of the mountains, and beheld a body of horsemen 
riding toward them, conducting a car, in which sat a knight in 
armor, bearing a standard. The princess now gave all up for 
lost. “ These,” said she, “are sent by my brother in pursuit of 
us; how can we escape, for this poor animal has no longer 
strength nor speed to bear us up the mountains?” Upon this 
Count Feman alighted, and drawing the sword of the arch¬ 
priest, placed himself in a narrow pass. “Do you,” said he to 
the princess, “turn back and hasten to the mountains, and 
dearly shall it cost him who attempts to follow you.” “Not 


Cimfi&ICZE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


33 


so,” replied the princess; “ior the love of me hast thou been 
brought from thine own domain and betrayed into all these 
dangers, and I will abide to share them with thee.” 

The count would have remonstrated, when to his astonish¬ 
ment he saw, as the car drew near, that the knight seated in 
it was clad in Ins own armor, with his own devices, and held 
his own banner in his hand. “ Surely,” said he, crossing him¬ 
self, “this is enchantment;” but on looking still nearer, he rec 
ognized among the horsemen Nuho Sandias and Nuno Laynez, 
two of his most faithful knights. Then his heart leaped for 
joy. “Fear nothing,” cried ho to the princess; “behold my 
standard, and behold my vassals. Those whom you feared 
as enemies shall kneel at your feet and kiss your hand in 
homage.” 

Now so it appears that the tidings of the captivity of the 
count had spread mourning and consternation throughout 
Castile, and the cavaliers assembled together to devise means 
for his deliverance. And certain of them had prepared this 
effigy of the count, clad in his armor and bearing his banner 
and devices, and having done homage and sworn fealty to it 
as they would have done to the count himself, they had placed 
it in this car and set forth with it as a leader, making a vow, 
in the spirit of ancient chivalry, never to return to their 
homes until they should have delivered the count from his 
captivity. 

When the cavaliers recognized the count, they put up shouts 
of joy, and kissed his hands and the hands of the princess in 
token of devoted loyalty. And they took off the fetters of the 
count and placed him in the car and the princess beside him, 
and returned joyfully to Castile. 

Vain would be the attempt to describe the transports of the 
multitude as Count Fernan Gonzalez entered his noble capital 
of Burgos. The Princess Sancha, also, was hailed with bless¬ 
ings wherever she passed, as the deliverer of their lord and the 
saviour of Castile, and shortly afterward her nuptials with the 
count wqre celebrated with feasting and rejoicing and tilts and 
tournaments, which lasted for many days. 


34 


MOORISH CHUOmCLES. 


CHAPTER XII. 

KING GARCIA CONFINED IN BURGOS BY THE COUNT.—THE PRINCESS 
INTERCEDES FOR HIS RELEASE. 

The rejoicings for the marriage of Count Fernan Gonzalez 
with the beautiful Princess Sancha were scarcely finished 
when King Garcia the Trembler came with a powerful army 
to revenge his various affronts. The count sallied forth to 
meet him, and a bloody and doubtful battle ensued. The 
Navarrese at length were routed, and the king was wounded 
and taken prisoner in single combat by Count Fernan, who 
brought him to Burgos and put him in close confinement. 

The Countess Dona Sancha was now almost as much afflicted 
at the captivity of her brother as she had been at that of the 
count, and interceded with her husband for his release. The 
count, however, retained too strong a recollection of the bad 
faith of King Garcia and of his own treacherous and harsh im¬ 
prisonment to be easily moved, and the king was kept in 
duress for a considerable time. The countess then interested 
the principal cavaliers in her suit, reminding them of the ser¬ 
vices she had rendered them in aiding the escape of their lord. 
Through their united intercessions the count was induced to 
relent; so King Garcia the Trembler was released and treated 
with ^reat honor, and sent back to his dominions with a 
retinue befitting his rank. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

OF THE EXPEDITION .AGAINST THE ANCIENT CITY CF SYLO. —THW 
UNWITTING TRESPASS OF THE COUNT INTO A CONVENT, AND 
HIS COMPUNCTION THEREUPON. 

Volumes would it take to follow the Count Fernan Gonzalez 
in his heroic achievements against the infidels—achievements 
which give to sober history almost the air of fable. I forbear 
to dwell at large upon one of his campaigns, wherein he 
scoured the Valley of Laguna; passed victoriously along the 



CHRONICLE OF FERN AN OONZALEZ. 


35 


banks of the Douro, building towers and castles to keep the 
country in subjection; how he scaled the walls of the castle of 
Ormaz, being the first to mount, sword in hand; how by the 
valor of his arm he captured the city of Orma; how he took 
the town of Sandoval, the origin of the cavaliers of Sandoval, 
who were anciently called Salvadores; how he made an inroad 
even to Madrid, then a strongly fortified village, and having 
taken and sacked it, returned in triumph to Burgos. 

But it would be wronging the memory ot this great and 
good cavalier to pass in silence over one of his exploits in 
which he gave a singular instance of his piety. This was in 
an expedition against the ancient city of Sylo. It was not a 
place of much value in itself, being situated in a cold and 
sterile country, but i*fc had become a stronghold of the Moors, 
whence they carried on their warfare. This place the count 
carried by assault, entering it in full armor, on his steed, over¬ 
turning and slaying all who opposed him. In the fury oC his 
career he rode into a spacious edifice which he supposed to be 
a mosque, with the pious intention of slaying every infidel he 
might find within. On looking round, however, great was his 
astonishment at beholding images of saints, the blessed cross 
of our Saviour, and various other sacred objects, which an¬ 
nounced a church devoted to the veritable faith. Struck with 
remorse, he sprang from his horse, threw himself upon his 
knees, and with many tears implored pardon of God for the 
sin he had unknowingly committed. While he was yet on his 
knees, several monks of the order of St. Dominic approached, 
meagre in looks and squalid i«n attire, but hailing him with 
great joy as their deliverer. Iij sooth this was a convent of 
San Sebastian, the fraternity of which had remained captives 
among the Moors, supporting themselves poorly by making 
baskets, but permitted to continue in the exercise of their reli¬ 
gion. 

Still filled with pious compunction for the trespass he had 
made, the count ordered that the shoes should be taken from 
his horse and nailed upon the door of the church; for never, 
said he, shall they tread any other ground after having trod¬ 
den this holy place. From that day, we are told, it has been 
the custom to nail the shoes of horses on the portal of that con¬ 
vent—a custom which has extended to many other places. 

The worthy Fray Prudencia de Sandoval records a marvel¬ 
lous memento of the expedition of the count against this city, 
which remained, he says, until his day. Not far from the 


36 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


place, on the road which passes by Lara, is to be seen the print 
of his horse’s hoofs in a solid rock, which has received the im¬ 
pression as though it had been made in softened wax.* It is 
to be presumed that the horse’s hoofs had been gifted with 
miraculous hardness in reward to the count for his pious obla¬ 
tion of the shoes. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

OF THE MOORISH HOST THAT CAME UP FROM CORDOVA, AND 
HOW THE COUNT REPAIRED TO .THE HERMITAGE OF SAN 
PEDRO, AND PRAYED FOR SUCCESS AGAINST THEM, AND RE¬ 
CEIVED ASSURANCE OF VICTORY IN A VISION.—BATTLE OF 
HAZINAS. 

The worthy Fray Antonia Agapida, from whose manu¬ 
scripts this memoir is extracted, passes by many of the strik¬ 
ing and heroic deeds of the count, which crowd the pages of 
ancient chroniclers; but the .good friar ever is sure to dwell 
with delight upon any of those miraculous occurrences which 
took place in Spain in those days, and which showed the 
marked interposition of Heaven in behalf of the Christian war¬ 
riors in their battles with the infidels. Such was the renowned 
battle of Hazinas, which, says Agapida, for its miraculous 
events is worthy of eternal blazon. 

Now so it was that the Moorish king of Cordova had sum¬ 
moned all the faithful, both of Spain and Africa, to assist him 
in recovering the lands wrested from him by the unbelievers, 
and especially by Count Fernan Gonzalez in his late victories; 
and such countless legions of turbaned warriors were assem¬ 
bled that it was said they covered the plains of Andalusia like 
swarms of locusts. 

Hearing of their threatening approach, the count gathered 
together his forces at Piedrafita, while the Moors encamped in 
Hazinas. When, however, he beheld the mighty host arrayed 
against him, his heart for once was troubled with evil fore¬ 
bodings, and, calling to mind the cheering prognostications of 
the friar Pelayo on a like occasion, he resolved to repair again 


* Sandoval, p. 313. 




CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


3 


to that holy man for counsel. Leaving his camp, therefore, 
secretly, he set out, accompanied by two cavaliers, to seek the 
chapel which he had ordered to be built at the hermitage of 
San Pedro, on the mountain overhanging the river Arlanza 
but when arrived there he heard to his great grief that the 
worthy friar was dead. 

Entering the chapel, however, he knelt down at the altar 
and prayed for success in the coming fight; humbly represent¬ 
ing that he had never, like many of the kings and nobles of 
Spain, done homage to the infidels and acknowledged them for 
sovereigns. The count remained a long time at prayer, until 
sleep gradually stole over him; and as he lay slumbering be¬ 
fore the altar, the holy Fray Pelayo appeared before him in a 
vision, clad in garments as white as snow. “Why sleepest 
thou, Fernan Gonzalez?” said he; “arise, and go forth, and 
know that thou shalt conquer those Moors. For, inasmuch as 
thou art a faithful vassal of the Most High, he has commanded 
the Apostle San Iago and myself, with many angels, to come 
to thy aid, and we will appear in the battle clad in white 
armor, with each of us a red cross upon our pennon. There¬ 
fore arise, I say, and go hence with a valiant heart.” 

The count awoke, and while he was yet musing upon the 
vision, he heard a voice, saying, “Arise, and get thee hence; 
why dost thou linger? Separate thy host into three divisions: 
enter the field of battle by the east, with the smallest division, 
and I will be with thee; and let the second division enter by 
the west, and that shall be aided by San Iago; and let the third 
division enter by the north. Know that I am San Millan who 
come to thee with this message.” 

The count departed joyfully from the chapel, and returned 
to his army; and when he told his troops of this, his second 
visit to the hermitage, and of the vision he had had, and how 
the holy friar San Pelayo had again assured him of victory, 
their hearts were lifted up, and they rejoiced to serve under a 
leader who had such excellent counsellors in war. 

In the evening preceding the battle, Don Fernan Gonzalez 
divided his forces as he had been ordered. The first division 
was composed of two hundred horsemen and six thousand in¬ 
fantry ; hardy mountaineers, light of foot and of great valor. 
In the advance were Don Gustios Gonzalez of Salas, and his 
Seven sons and two nephews, and his brother Buy Velasquez, 
and a valiant cavalier named Gonzalo Dias. 

The second division was led by Don Lope de Biscaya, with 


38 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


the people of Burueba and Trevino, and Old Castile and Casirn 
and the Asturias. Two hundred horsemen and six thousand 
infantry. 

The third division was led by the count himself, and with 
him went Buy Cavia, and Nuno Cavia, and the Velascos, 
whom the count that day dubbed knights, and twenty 
esquires of the count, whom he had likewise knighted. His 
division consisted of four hundred and fifty horse and fifteen 
hundred foot; and he told his men that if they should not con¬ 
quer the Moors on the following day, they should draw off 
from the battle when he gave the word. Late at night, when 
all the camp, excepting the sentinels and guards, were buried 
in sleep, a light suddenly illumined the heavens, and a great 
serpent was seen in the air, wounded and covered with blood, 
and vomiting flames, and making a loud hissing that awakened 
all the soldiers. They rushed out of their tents, and ran 
hither and thither, running against each other in their affright. 
Count Fernan Gonzalez was awakened by their outcries, but 
before he came forth the serpent had disappeared. He 
rebuked the terrors of his people, representing to them that the 
Moors were great necromancers, and by their arts could raise 
devils to their aid; and that some Moorish astrologer had 
doubtless raised this spectrum to alarm them; but he bade 
them be of good heart, since they had San Iago on their side, 
and might set Moor, astrologer, and devil at defiance. 

In the first day’s fight Don Fernan fought hand to hand with 
a powerful Moor, who had desired to try his prowess with 
him. It was an obstinate contest, in which the Moor was 
slain; but the count was so badly wounded that he fell to the 
earth, and had not his men surrounded and defended him, he 
would have been slain or captured. The battle lasted all day 
long, and Gustios Gonzalez and his kindred warriors showed 
prodigies of valor. Don Fernan, having had his wounds 
stanched, remounted his horse and galloped about, giving 
courage to his men; but he was covered with dust and blood, 
and so hoarse that he could no longer be heard. The sun 
went down, the Moors kept on fighting, confiding in their 
great numbers. The count, seeing the night approaching, 
ordered the trumpets to be sounded, and, collecting his troops, 
made one general charge on the Moors, and drove them from 
the field. He then drew off his men to their tents, where the 
weary troops found refreshment and repose, though they 
slept all night on their arms. 


CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


39 

On the second day the count rose before the dawn, and hav¬ 
ing attended mass like a good Christian, attended next to his 
horses, like a good cavalier, seeing with his own eyes that they 
were well fed and groomed, and prepared for the field. The 
battle this day was obstinate as the day before, with great 
valor and loss on either side. 

On the third day the count led forth his forces at an early 
hour, raising his silver standard of the cross, and praying de¬ 
voutly for aid. Then lowering their lances, the Castilians 
shouted San Iago! San Iago! and rushed to the attack. 

Don Gustios Gonzalo de Salas, the leader of one of the divi¬ 
sions, made a lane into the centre of the Moorish host, dealing 
death on either side. He was met by a Moorish cavalier of 
powerful frame. Covering themselves with their shields, they 
attacked each other with great fury • but the days of Gustios 
Gonzalo were numbered, for the Moor slew him, and with him 
fell a nephew of Count Fernan, and many of his principal cav¬ 
aliers. 

Count Fernan Gonzalez encountered the Moor who had just 
slain his friend. The infidel would have avoided him, having 
heard that never man escaped alive from a conflict with him; 
but the count gave him a furious thrust with his lance, which 
stretched him dead upon the field. 

The Moors, however, continued to press the count sorely, 
and their numbers threatened to overwhelm him. Then he 
put up a prayer for the aid promised in his vision, and of a 
sudden the Apostle San Iago appeared, with a great and shin¬ 
ing company of angels in white, bearing the device of a red 
cross, and all rushing on the Moors. The Moors were dismayed 
at the sight of this reinforcement to the enemy. The Chris¬ 
tians, on the other hand, recovered their forces, knowing the 
Apostle San Iago to be at hand. They charged the Moors with 
new vigor, and put them to flight, and pursued them for two 
days, killing and making captive. They then returned and 
gathered together the bodies of the Christians who had been 
slain, and buried them in the chapel of San Pedro of Arlanza, 
and in other hermitages. The bodies of the Moors were piled 
up and covered with earth, forming a pile which is still to be 
seen on the field of battle. 

Some have ascribed to the signal worn in this battle by the 
celestial warriors the origin of the Cross of Calatrava. 


40 


MOORISH CUROJSfIGLESo 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE COUNT IMPRISONED BY THE KING OF LEON.—THE COUNTESS 
CONCERTS HIS ESCAPE.—LEON AND CASTILE UNITED BY THE 
MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE ORDONO WITH URRACA, THE DAUGH¬ 
TER OF THE COUNT BY HIS FIRST WIFE. 

Not long after this most renowned and marvellous battle, a 
Moorish captain named Aceyfa became a vassal of the Count 
Don Fernan. Under his protection, and that of a rich and 
powerful Castilian cavalier named Diego Munon, he rebuilt 
Salamanca and Ledesma, and several places on the river 
Tormes, which had been desolated and deserted in times past. 

Ramiro the Second, who was at this time King of Leon, was 
alarmed at seeing a strong line of Moorish fortresses erected 
along the borders of his territories, and took the field with an 
army to drive the Moor Aceyfa from the land. The proud spirit 
of Count Fernan Gonzalez was aroused at this attack upon his 
Moorish vassal, which he considered an indignity offered to 
himself; so being seconded by Don Diego Munon, he marched 
forth with his chivalry to protect the Moor. In the present 
instance he had trusted to his own head, and had neglected to 
seek advice of saint or hermit; so his army was defeated by 
King Ramiro, and himself and Don Diego Munon taken pris¬ 
oner. The latter was sent in chains to the castle of Gordon; 
but the count was carried to Leon, where he was confined in a 
tower of the wall, which is to this day pointed out as his 
prison.* 

All Castile was thrown into grief and consternation by this 
event, and lamentations were heard throughout the land, as 
though the count had been dead. The countess, however, ’did 
not waste time in idle tears, for she was a lady of more valiant, 
spirit. She forthwith assembled five hundfed cavaliers, chosen 
men of tried loyalty and devotion to the count. They met in 
the chapel of the palace, and took an oath upon the Holy 
Evangelists to follow the countess through all difficulties and 


* In tlie Cronica General de Espana, this imprisonment is said to have been by 
Kinj? Sancho the Fat; but the cautious Agapida goes according to his favorite San¬ 
doval in attributing it to King Ramiro, and in so doing he is supported by the 
Chronicle of Bleda. L. 3. c. 19. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


41 


dangers, and to obey implicitly all her commands for tho 
rescue of their lord. With this band the countess departed 
secretly at nightfall, and travelled rapidly until morning, when 
they left the roads, and took to the mountains, lest their march 
should be discovered. Arrived near Leon, she halted her band 
in a thick wood in the mountain of Samosa where she ordered 
them to remain in secrecy. Then clothing herself as a pilgrim 
with her staff and pannier, she sent word to King Ramiro that 
she was on a pilgrimage to San Iago, and entreated that she 
might have permission to visit her husband in his prison. 
King Ramiro not merely granted her request, but sallied forth 
above a league from the city with a great retinue to do her 
honor. So the countess entered a second time the prison where 
the count lay in chains, and stood before him as his protecting 
angel. At sight of him in this miserable and dishonored state, 
however, the valor of spirit which had hitherto sustained her 
gave way, and tears flowed from her eyes. The count re¬ 
ceived her joyfully, and reproached her with her tears; “for 
it becomes us,” said he, “to submit to what is imposed upon 
us by God.” 

The countess now sent to entreat the king that while she re¬ 
mained with the count his chains should be taken off. The 
king again granted her request; and the count was freed from 
his irons and an excellent bed prepared in his prison. 

The countess remained with him all night and concerted his 
escape. Before it was daylight she gave him her pilgrim’s 
dress and staff, and the count went forth from the chamber 
disguised as his wife. The porter at the outer portal, thinking 
it to be the countess, would have waited for orders from the 
king; but the count, in a reigned voice, entreated not to be de¬ 
tained, lest he should not be able to perform his pilgrimage. 
The porter, mistrusting no deceit, opened the door. The count 
issued forth, repaired to a place pointed out by the countess, 
where the two cavaliers awaited him with a fleet horse. They 
all sallied quietly forth from the city at the opening of the 
gates, until they found themselves clear of the walls, when 
they put spurs to their horses and made their way to the 
mountain of Samosa. Here the count was received with 
shouts of joy by the cavaliers whom the countess had left there 
in concealment. 

As the day advanced the keeper of the prison entered the 
apartment of Don Reman, but was astonished to find there 
the beautiful countess in place of her ^warrior husband. He 


42 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


conducted her before the king, accusing her of the fraud by 
which she had effected the escape of the count. King Ramiro 
was greatly incensed, and he demanded of the countess how 
she dared to do such an act. “ I dared,” replied she, “ because 
I saw my husband in misery, and felt it my duty to relievo 
him; and I dared because I was the daughter of a king, and 
the wife of a distinguished cavalier; as such I trust to your 
chivalry to treat me.” 

The king was'charmed with her intrepidity. “ Senora,” said 
he, u you have acted well and like a noble lady, and it wall re 
dound to your laud and honor. ” So he commanded that she 
should be conducted 'to her husband in a manner befitting a 
lady of high and noble rank; and the count was overjoyed to 
receive her in safety, and they returned to their dominions 
ana entered Burgos at the head of their train of cavaliers, 
armdst the transports and acclamations of their people. And 
King Ramiro sought the amity of Count Fernan Gonzalez, and 
proposed that they should unite their houses by some matri¬ 
monial alliance which should serve as a bond of mutual se¬ 
curity. The count gladly listened to his proposals. He had a 
fail- daughter named Urraca, by his first wife, who was now 
arrived at a marriageable age; so it was agreed that nuptials 
should be solemnized between her and the Prince Ordono, son 
of King Ramiro; and all Leom and Castile rejoiced at this 
anion, which promised tranquillity to the land. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

MOORISH INCURSION INTO CASTILE.—BATTLE OF SAN ESTEVAN.— 
OF PASCUAL VIVAS AND THE MIRACLE THAT BEFELL HIM.— 
DEATH OF ORDONO III. 

For several succeeding years of the career of this most re¬ 
doubtable cavalier, the most edifying and praiseworthy traces 
which remain, says Fray Antonio Agapida, are to be found in 
the archives of various monasteries, consisting of memorials of 
pious gifts and endowments made by himself and his .countess, 
Dona Sancha. 

In the process of time King Ramiro died, and was succeeded 
’by his son Ordofio III., the same who had married Urraca, the 



CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. ' 43 

daughter of Count Feman. He was surnamed the Fierce, 
either from his savage temper or savage aspect. He had a 
step-brother named Don Sancho, nephew, by the mother’s side, 
of King Garcia of Navarre, surnamed the Trembler. This Don 
Sancho rose in arms against Ordono at the very outset of his 
reign, seeking to deprive him of his crown. He applied for 
assistance to his uncle Garcia and to Count Fernan Gonzalez, 
and it is said both favored his pretensions. Nay, the count 
soon appeared in the field in company with King Garcia the 
Trembler, in support of Prince Sancho. It may seem strange 
that he should take up arms against his own son-in-law; and 
so it certainly appeared to Ordono III., for he was so incensed 
against the count that he repudiated his wife Urraca and sent 
her back to her father, telling him that since he would not ac¬ 
knowledge him as king, he should not have him for son-in-law. 

The kingdom now became a prey to civil wars; the restless 
part of the subjects of King Ordono rose in rebellion, and 
everything was in confusion. King Ordono succeeded, how¬ 
ever, in quelling the rebellion, and defended himself so ably 
against King Garcia and Count Fernan Gonzalez, that they re¬ 
turned home without effecting their object. 

About this time, say the records of Compostello, the sinful 
dissensions of the Christians brought on them a visible and 
awful scourge from Heaven. A great flame, or, as it were, a 
cloud of fire, passed throughout the land, burning towns, de¬ 
stroying men and beasts, and spreading horror and devastation 
even over the sea. It passed over Zamora, consuming a great 
part of the place; it scorched Castro Xerez likewise, and Bre- 
biesco and Pan Corvo in its progress, and in Burgos one hundred 
houses were consumed. 

‘‘These,” says the worthy Agapida, “were fiery tokens of 
the displeasure of Heaven at the sinful conduct of the Chris¬ 
tians in warring upon each other, instead of joining their arms 
like brethren in the righteous endeavor to extirpate the vile sect 
of Mahomet.” 

While the Christians were thus fighting among themselves, 
the Moors, taking advantage of their discord, came with a great 
army, and made an incursion into Castile as far as Burgos. 
King Ordono and Count Fernan Gonzalez, alarmed at the 
common danger, came to a reconciliation, and took arms to¬ 
gether against the moors; thougn it does not appear that the 
king received again his repudiated wife Urraca. These con¬ 
federate princes gave the Moors a great battle near to San 


44 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Estevan. “This battle,” says Fray Antonio Agapida, “is 
chiefly memorable for a miracle which occurred there,” and 
which is recorded by the good friar with an unction and perfect 
credence worthy of a monkish chronicler. 

The Christians were incastellated at San Estevan de Gormaz, 
which is near the banks of the Douro. The Moors had posses¬ 
sion of the fortress of Gormaz, about a league further up the 
river on a lofty and rocky height. 

The battle commenced at the dawn of day. Count Fernan 
Gonzalez, however, before taking the field, repaired with his 
principal cavaliers to the church, to attend the first morning’s 
mass. Now, at this time, there was in the service of the count 
a brave cavalier named Pascual Vivas, who was as pious as he 
was brave, and would pray with as much fervor and obstinacy 
as he would fight. This cavalier made it a religious rule with 
himself, or rather had made a solemn vow, that, whenever he 
entered a church in the morning, he would on no account leave 
it until all the masses were finished. 

On the presentr occasion the firmness of this brave but pious 
cavalier was put to a severe proof. When the first mass was 
finished, the count and his cavaliers rose and sallied from the 
church in clanking armor, and soon after the sound of trumpet 
and quick tramp of steed told that they were off to the en¬ 
counter. Pascual Vivas, however, remained kneeling all in 
armor before the altar, waiting, according to custom, until all 
the masses should be finished. The masses that morning were 
numerous, and hour after hour passed away; yet still the 
cavalier remained kneeling all in armor, with weapon in hand, 
yet so zealous in his devotion that he never turned his head. 

All this while the esquire of the cavalier was at the door of 
the church, holding his war-horse, and the esquire beheld with 
surprise the count and his warriors depart, while his lord re¬ 
mained in the chapel; and, from the height on which the chapel 
stood, he could see the Christian host encounter the Moors at 
the ford of the river, and could hear the distant sound of trum¬ 
pets and din of battle; and at the sound the war-horse pricked 
up his ears, snuffed the air, and pawed the earth, and showed 
all the eagerness of a noble steed to be among the armed men, 
but still Pascual Vivas came not out of the chapel. The es¬ 
quire was wroth, and blushed for his lord, for he thought it 
was through cowardice and not piety that he remained in the 
chapel while his comrades were fighting in the field. 

At length the masses were finished, and Pascual Vivas was 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


45 


about to sally forth when horsemen came riding up the hill 
with shouts of victory, for the battle was over and the Moors 
completely vanquished. 

When Pascual Vivas heard this he was so troubled in mind 
that he dared not leave the chapel nor come into the presence 
of the count, for he said to himself, “Surely I shall be looked 
upon as a recreant knight, who have hidden myself in the hour 
of danger. ” Shortly, however, came some of his fellow-cava¬ 
liers, summoning him to the presence of the count; and as he 
went with a beating heart, they lauded him for the valor he 
had displayed and the great services he had rendered, saying 
that to the prowess of his arm they owed the victory. The good 
knight, imagining they were scoffing at him, felt still more 
cast down in spirit, and entered the presence of the count cov¬ 
ered with confusion. Here again he was received with praises 
and caresses, at which he was greatly astonished, but still 
thought it all done in mockery. When the truth came to be 
known, however, all present were filled with wonder, for it 
appeared as if this cavalier had been, at the same moment, in 
the chapel, and in the field; for while he remained on his knees 
before the altar, with his steed pawing the earth at the door, a 
warrior exactly resembling him, with the same arms, device, 
and steed, had appeared in the hottest of the fight, penetrating 
and overthrowing whole squadrons of Moors; that he had cut 
his way to the standard of the enemy, killed the standard- 
bearer, and carried off the banner in triumph; that his pour- 
point and coat of mail were cut to pieces, and his horse covered 
with wounds; yet still he fought on, and through his valor 
chiefly the victory was obtained. 

What more moved astonishment was that for every wound 
received by the warrior and his steed in the field, there appeared 
marks on the pourpoint and coat of mail and upon the steed of 
Pascual Vivas, so that he had the semblance of having been in 
the severest press of the battle. 

The matter was now readily explained by the worthy friars 
who followed the armies in those days, and who were skilful 
In expounding the miracles daily occurring in those holy wars. 
A miraculous intervention had been vouchsafed to Pascual 
Vivas. That his piety in remaining at his prayers might not 
put him to shame before sinful men, an angel bearing his form 
and semblance had taken his place in battle, and fought while 
he prayed. 

The matter being thus explained, all present were filled with 


46 


MODISH CHRONICLES. 


pious admiration, and Pascual Vivas, if he ceased to be extolled 
as a warrior, came near being canonized as a saint.* 

King Ordofio III. did not long survive this battle. Scarce 
had he arrived at Zamora on his way homeward, when he 
was seized with a mortal malady of which he died. He was 
succeeded by his brother Don Sancho, the same who had for¬ 
merly endeavored to dispossess him of his throne. 


CHAPTER XVIL 

KING SANCHO THE FAT.—OF THE HOMAGE HE EXACTED FROM 
COUNT FERNAN GONZALEZ, AND OF THE STRANGE BARGAIN 
THAT HE MADE WITH HIM FOR THE PURCHASE OF HIS HORSE 
AND FALCON. 

King Sancho I., on ascending the throne, held a cortes at 
Leon, where all the great men of the kingdom and the princes 
who owed allegiance to him were expected to attend and pay 
homage. As the court of Leon was excessively tenacious of 
its claim to sovereignty over Castile, the absence of Count 
Fernan Gonzalez was noticed with great displeasure by the 
king, who sent missives to him commanding his attendance. 
The count being proud of heart, and standing much upon the 
independence of Castile, was unwilling to kiss the hand of any 
one in token of vassalage. He was at length induced to stifle 
his repugnance and repair to the court, but he went in almost 
regal style and with a splendid retinue, more like a sovereign 
making a progress through his dominions. 

As he approached the city of Leon, King Sancho came forth 
in great state to receive him, and they met apparently as 
friends, but there was enmity against each other in their 
hearts. 

The rich and gallant array with which Count Fernan made 


* Exactly the same kind of miracle is recorded as happening in the same place to 
a cavalier of the name of Don Fernan Antolenez, in the service of the Count Garcia 
Fernandez. Fray Antonio Agapida has no doubt that the same miracle did actually 
happen to both cavaliers; “for in those days,” says he, “ there was such a demand 
for miracles that the same had frequently to be repeatedwitness the repeated 
appearance of San lago in precisely the same manner, to save Christian armies 
from imminent danger of defeat, and achieve wonderful victories over the infidels, 
as we find recorded throughout the Spanish chronicles. 




CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


47 


his entry in Leon was the theme of every tongue; but nothing 
attracted more notice than a falcon thoroughly trained, which 
he carried on his hand, and an Arabian horse of wonderful 
beauty, which he had gained in his wars with the Moors. 
King Sancho was seized with a vehement desire to possess this 
horse and falcon, and offered to purchase them of the count. 
Don Fernan haughtily declined to enter into traffic; but offered 
them to the monarch as a gift. The king was equally punc¬ 
tilious in refusing to accept a favor; but as monarchs do not 
easily forego anything on which they have set their hearts, it 
became evident to Count Fernan that it was necessary, for the 
sake of peace, to part with his horse and falcon. To save his 
dignity, Tiowever, he asked a price corresponding to his rank; 
for it was beneath a cavalier, he said, to sell his things cheap, 
like a mean man. He demanded, therefore, one thousand 
marks of silver for the horse and falcon,—to be paid on a stip¬ 
ulated day; if not paid on that day the price to doubled on the 
next, and on each day’s further delay the price should in like 
manner be doubled. To these terms the king gladly consented, 
and the terms were specified in a written agreement, which 
was duly signed and witnessed. The king thus gained the 
horse and falcon, but it will be hereinafter shown that this 
indulgence of his fancy cost him dear. 

This eager desire for an Arabian steed appears the more sin¬ 
gular in Sancho theJFirst, from his being so corpulent that he 
could not sit on horseback. Hence he is commonly known 
in history by the appellation of King Sancho the Fat. His 
unwieldy bulk, also, may be one reason why he soon lost the 
favor of his warrior subjects, who looked upon him as a mere 
trencherman and bed-presser, and not fitted to command men 
who lived in the saddle, and had rather fight than either eat 
or sleep. 

King Sancho saw that he might soon have hard fighting to 
maintain his throne; and how could he figure as a warrior 
who could not mount on horseback? In his anxiety he repaired 
to his uncle Garcia, king of Navarre, surnamed the Trembled, 
who was an exceeding meagre man, and asked counsel of him 
what he should do to cure himself of this troublesome corpu¬ 
lency. Garcia the Trembler was totally at a loss for a recipe, 
his own leanness being a gift of Nature; he advised him, how¬ 
ever, to repair to Abderahman, the Miramamolin of Spain and 
•King of Cordova, with whom he was happily at peace, and 
consult with him, and seek advice of the Arabian physicians 


48 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


resident at Cordova—the Moors Deing generally a spare and 
active people, and the Arabian physicians skilful above all 
others in the treatment of diseases. 

King Sancho the Fat, therefore, sent amicable messages be¬ 
forehand to the Moorish miramamolin, and followed them as 
fast as his corpulency would permit; and he was well received 
by the Moorish sovereign, and remained for a long time at 
Cordova, diligently employed in decreasing his rotundity. 

While the corpulent king was thus growing leaner, dis¬ 
content broke out among his subjects at home; and Count 
Fernan Gonzalez, taking advantage of it, stirred up an in¬ 
surrection, and placed upon the throne Leon Ordono the 
Fourth, surnamed the Bad, who was a kinsman of the late 
King Ordono III., and he moreover gave him his daughter for 
wife—his daughter Urraca, the repudiated wife of the late 
king. 

If the good Count Fernan Gonzalez supposed he had fortified 
himself by this alliance, and that his daughter was now fixed 
for the second tune, and more firmly than ever, on the throne 
of Leon, he was grievously deceived; for Sancho I. returned 
from Cordova at the head of a powerful host of Moors, and 
was no longer to be called the Fat, for he had so well succeeded 
under the regimen prescribed by the miramamolin and his 
Arabian physicians, that he could vault into the saddle with 
merely putting his hand upon the pommel. 

Ordono IV. was a man of puny heart; no sooner did he hear 
of the approach of King Sancho, and of his marvellous leanness 
and agility, than he was seized with terror, and abandoning 
his throne and his twice-repudiated spouse, Urraca, he made 
for the mountains of Asturias, or, as others assert, was over¬ 
taken by the Moors and killed with lances. 


i 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

FURTHER OF THE HORSE AND FALCON. 

King Sancho I., having re-established himself on the throne, 
and recovered the good-will of his subjects by his leanness and 
horsemanship, sent a stern message to Count Fernan Gonzalez" 
to come to his cortes, or resign his countship. The count was 




CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


49 


exceedingly indignant at this order, and feaiwd, moreover, 
that some indignity or injury would be offered him should he 
repair to Leon. He made the message known to his principal 
cavaliers, and requested their advice. Most of them were of 
opinion that he should not go to the cortes. Don Fernan de¬ 
clared, however, that he would not act disloyally in omitting 
to do that which the counts of Castile had always performed, 
although he felt that he incurred the risk of death or imprison¬ 
ment. Leaving his son, Garcia Fernandez, therefore, in charge 
of his counsellors, he departed for Leon with only seven cav¬ 
aliers. 

As he approached the gates of that city, no one came forth 
to greet him, as had always been the custom. This he con¬ 
sidered an evil sign. Presenting himself before the king, he 
would have kissed his hand, hut the monarch withheld it. 
He charged the count with being vainglorious and disloyal; 
with having absented himself from the cortes and conspired 
against his throne;—for all which he should make atonement, 
and should give hostages or pledges for his good faiP v before he 
left the court. 

The count in reply accounted for absenting himself from 
the cortes by the perfidious treatment he had formerly experi¬ 
enced at Leon. As to any grievances the king might have to 
complain of, he stood ready to redress them, provided the 
king would make good his own written engagement, signed 
with his own hand and sealed with his own seal, to pay for the 
horse and falcon which he had purchased of the count on his 
former visit to Leon. Three years had now elapsed since the 
day appointed for the payment, and in the mean time the 
price had gone on daily doubling, according to stipulation. 

They parted mutually indignant; and, after the count had 
retired to his quarters, the king, piqued to maintain his royal 
word, summoned his major-domo, and ordered him to take a 
large amount of treasure and carry it to the Count of Castile 
in payment of his demand. So the major-domo repaired to 
the count with a great sack of money to settle with him for 
the horse and hawk; but when he came to cast up the account, 
and double it each day that had intervened since the appointed 
day of payment, the major-domo, though an expert man at 
figures, was totally confounded, and, returning to the king, 
assured him that all the money in the world would not suffice 
to pay the debt. King Sancho was totally at a loss how to 
keep his word, and pay off a debt which was more than 


50 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


enough to ruin him. Grievously dia he repent his first ex¬ 
perience in traffic, and found that it is not safe even for a 
monarch to trade in horses. 

In the mean time the count was suffered to return to Castile; 
but he did not let the matter rest here; for, being sorely in¬ 
censed at the indignities he had experienced, he sent missives 
to King Sancho, urging his demand of payment for the horse 
and falcon—menacing otherwise to make seizures by way of 
indemnification. Receiving no satisfactory reply, he made a 
foray into the kingdom of Leon, and brought off great spoil of 
sheep and cattle. 

King Sancho now saw that the count was too bold and 
urgent a creditor to be trifled with. In his perplexity he as¬ 
sembled the estates of his kingdom, and consulted them upon 
this momentous affair. His counsellors, like himself, were 
grievously perplexed between the sanctity of the royal word 
and the enormity of the debt. After much deliberation they 
suggested a compromise—the Count Fernan Gonzalez to relin¬ 
quish the debt, and in lieu thereof to be released from his vas¬ 
salage. 

The count agreed right gladly to this compromise, being 
thus relieved from all tribute and imposition, and from the 
necessity of kissing the hand of any man in the world as his 
sovereign. Thus did King Sancho pay with the sovereignty 
of Castile for a horse and falcon, and thus were the Castilians 
relieved, by a skilful bargain in horse-dealing, from all subjec¬ 
tion to the kingdom of Leon.* 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF COUNT FERNAN. -HIS DEATH. 

The good Count Fernan Gonzalez was now stricken in years. 
The fire of youth was extinct, the pride and ambition of man¬ 
hood were over; instead of erecting palaces and lofty castles, 
he began now to turn his thoughts upon the grave and to build 
his last earthly habitation, the sepulchre. 

Before erecting his own, he had one built of rich and stately 


* Croniea de Alonzo el Sabio, pt. 3, c. 19. 




CHRONICLE OF FERN AN GONZALEZ. 


51 


workmanship for his first wife, the object of his early love, 
and had her remains conveyed to it and interred with great 
solemnity. His own sepulchre, according to ancient promise, 
was prepared at the chapel and hermitage of San Pedro at 
Arlanza, where he had first communed with the holy Friar 
Pelayo. When it was completed, he merely inscribed upon it 
the word “ Obijt,” leaving the rest to be supplied by others 
after his death. 

When the Moors perceived that Count Fernan Gonzalez, 
once so redoubtable in arms, was old and infirm, and given to 
build tombs instead of castles, they thought it a favorable time 
to make an inroad into Castile. They passed the border, there¬ 
fore, in great numbers, laying everything waste and bearding 
the old lion in his very den. 

The veteran had laid by his sword and buckler, and had 
almost given up the world; but the sound of Moorish drum 
and trumpet called him back even from the threshold of the 
sepulchre. Buckling on once more his armor and bestriding 
his war-steed, he summoned around him his Castilian cava¬ 
liers, seasoned like him in a thousand battles, and accompanied 
by his son Garcia Fernandez, who inherited all the valor of his 
father, issued forth to meet the foe; followed by the shouts and 
blessings of the populace, who joyed to see him once more in 
arms and glowing with his ancient fire. 

The Moors were retiring from an extensive ravage, laden 
with booty and driving before them an immense cavalgada, 
when they descried a squadron of cavaliers, armed all in steel, 
emerging from a great cloud of dust, and bearing aloft the 
silver cross, the well-known standard of Count Fernan Gon¬ 
zalez. That veteran warrior came on, as usual, leading the 
way, sword in hand. The very sight of his standard had 
struck dismay into the enemy; they soon gave way before 
one of his vigorous charges, nor did he cease to pursue them 
until they took shelter within the very walls of Cordova. 
Here he wasted the surrounding country with fire and sword, 
and after thus braving the Moor in his very capital, returned 
triumphant to Burgos. 

“Such,” says Fray Antonio Agapida, “was the last cam¬ 
paign in the life of this most valorous cavalier;” and now, 
abandoning all further deeds of mortal enterprise in arms to 
his son Garcia Fernandez, he addressed all his thoughts, as he 
said, to prepare for his campaign in the skies. He still talked 
as a veteran warrior, whose whole life had been passed in 


52 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


arms, but his talk was not of earthly warfare nor of earthly 
kingdoms. He spoke only of the kingdom of heaven, and 
what he must do to make a successful inroad and gain an eter¬ 
nal inheritance in that blessed country. 

He was equally indefatigable in preparing for his spiritual 
as for his mortal campaign. Instead, however, of mailed war¬ 
riors tramping through his courts, and the shrill neigh of steed 
or clang of trumpet echoing among their walls, there were 
seen holy priests and barefoot monks passing to and fro, and 
the halls resounded with sacred melody of litany and psalm. 
So pleased was Heaven with the good works of this pious 
cavalier, and especially with rich donations to churches and 
monasteries which he made under the guidance of his spi¬ 
ritual counsellors, that we are told it was given to him to 
foresee in vision the day and hour when he should pass from 
this weary life and enter the mansions of eternal rest. 

Knowing that the time approached, he prepared for his end 
like a good Christian. He wrote to the kings of Leon and 
Navarre in terms of great humility, craving their pardon for 
all past injuries and offences, and entreating them, for the 
good of Christendom, to live in peace and amity, and make 
common cause for the defence of the faith. 

Ten days before the time which Heaven had appointed for 
his death he sent for the abbot of the chapel and convent of 
Arlanza, and bending his aged knees before him, confessed all 
his sins. This done, as in former times he had shown great 
state and ceremony in his worldly pageants, so now he ar¬ 
ranged his last cavalgada to the grave. Hi prayed the abbot 
to return to his monastery and have his sepulchre prepared for 
his reception, and that the abbots of St. Sebastian and Silos 
and Quirce, with a train of holy friars, might come at the 
appointed day for his body; that thus, as he commended his 
soul to Heaven through the hands of his confessor, he might, 
through the hands of these pious men, resign his body to the 
earth. 

When the abbot had departed, the count desired .to be left 
alone; and clothing himself in a coarse friar’s garb, he re¬ 
mained in fervent prayer for the forgiveness of his sins. As 
he had been a valiant captain all his life against the enemies of 
the faith, so was he in death against the enemies of the soul. 
He died in the full command of all his faculties, making no 
groans nor contortions, but rendering up his spirit with the 
calmness of a heroic cavalier. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNAN GONZALEZ. 


53 

We are told that when he died voices were heard from 
heaven in testimony of his sanctity, while the tears and lamen¬ 
tations of all Spain proved how much he was valued and be¬ 
loved on earth. His remains were conveyed, according to his 
request, to the monastery of St. Pedro de Arlanza by a proces¬ 
sion of holy friars with solemn chant and dirge. In the church 
of that convent they still repose; and two paintings are to be 
seen in the convent—one representing the count valiantly 
fighting with the Moors, the other conversing with St. Pelayo 
and St. Millan, as they appeared to him in vision before the 
battle of Hazinas. 

The cross which he used as his standard is still treasured up 
in the sacristy of the convent. It is of massive silver, two ells 
in length, with our Saviour sculptured upon it, and above the 
head, in Gothic letters, I. N. R I. Below is Adam awaking 
from the grave, with the words of St. Paul, “Awake, thou 
who sleepest, and arise from the tomb, for Christ shall give 
thee life.” 

This holy cross still has the form at the lower end by which 
the standard-bearer rested it in the pommel of his saddle. 

“ Inestimable,” adds Fray Antonio Agapida, “are the relics 
and remains of saints and sainted warriors.” In after times, 
when Fernando the Third, surnamed the Saint, went to the 
conquest of Seville, he took with him a bone of this thrice- 
blessed and utterly renowned cavalier, together with his sword 
and pennon, hoping through their efficacy to succeed in his 
enterprise,—nor was he disappointed; but what is marvellous 
to hear, but which we have on the authority of the good 
Bishop Sandoval, on the day on which King Fernando the 
Saint entered Seville in triumph, great blows were heard to 
resound within the sepulchre of the count of Arlanza, as if 
veritably his bones which remained behind exulted in the 
victory gained by those which had been carried to the wars. 
Thus were marvellously fulfilled the words of the holy psalm, 
—“ Exaltabant ossa humilitata.” * 

Here ends the chronicle of the most valorous and renowned 
Bon Fernan Gonzalez, Count of Castile. Laus Deo. 


* Sandoval, p. 334. 



.> pT; 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE PARENTAGE OF FERNANDO.—QUEEN BERENGUELA. —THE 
LARAS.—DON ALVAR CONCEALS THE DEATH OF KING HENRY.— 
MISSION OF QUEEN BERENGUELA TO ALFONSO IX.—SHE RE¬ 
NOUNCES THE CROWN OF CASTILE IN FAVOR OF HER SON 
FERNANDO. 

Fernando III., surnamed the Saint, was the son of Alfonso 
III., King of Leon, and of Berenguela, a princess of Castile; 
but there were some particulars concerning his parentage 
which it is necessary clearly to state before entering upon his 
personal history. 

Alfonso III. of Leon, and Alfonso IX. King of Castile, were 
cousins, but there were dissensions between them. The King 
of Leon, to strengthen himself, married his cousin, the Princess 
Theresa, daughter of his uncle, the King of Portugal. By her 
he had two daughters. The marriage was annulled by Pope 
Celestine III. on account of their consanguinity, and, on their 
making resistance, they were excommunicated and the king¬ 
dom laid under an interdict. This produced an unwilling sep¬ 
aration in 1195. Alfonso III. did not long remain single. Fresh 
dissensions having broken out between him and his cousin 
Alfonso IX. of Castile, they were amicably adjusted by his 
marrying the Princess Berenguela, daughter of that monarch. 
This second marriage, which took place about three years after 
the divorce, came likewise under the ban of the Church, and 
for the same reason, the near propinquity of the parties. Again 
the commands of the Pope were resisted, and again the refrac¬ 
tory parties were excommunicated and the kingdom laid under 
an interdict. 

The unfortunate King of Leon was the more unwilling to give 



66 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


up the present marriage, as the Queen Berenguela had made 
him the happy father of several children, one of whom he hoped 
might one day inherit the two crowns of Leon and Castile. 

The intercession and entreaties of the bishops of Castile so 
far mollified the rigor of the Pope, that a compromise was 
made; the legitimacy of the children by the present marriage 
was not to be affected by the divorce of the parents, and Fer¬ 
nando, the eldest, the subject of the present chronicle, was 
recognized as successor to his father to the throne of Leon. 
The divorced Queen Berenguela left Fernando in Leon, and re¬ 
turned, in 1204, to Castile, to the court of her father, Alfonso 
III. Here she remained until the death of her father in 1214, 
who was succeeded by his son, Enrique, or Henry I. The latter 
being only in his eleventh year, his sister, the ex-Queen Beren¬ 
guela, was declared regent. She well merited the trust, for 
she was a woman of great prudence and wisdom, and of a reso¬ 
lute and magnanimous spirit. 

At this time the house of Lara had risen to great power. 
There were three brothers of that turbulent and haughty race, 
Don Alvar Nunez, Don Fernan Nunez, and Don Gonzalo Nunez. 
The Laras had caused great trouble in the kingdom during the 
minority of Prince Henry’s father, by arrogating to themselves 
the regency; and they now attempted, in like manner, to get 
the guardianship of the son, declaring it an office too impor¬ 
tant and difficult to be entrusted to a woman. Having a pow¬ 
erful and unprincipled party among the nobles, and using great 
bribery among persons in whom Berenguela confided, they car¬ 
ried their point; and the virtuous Berenguela, to prevent civil 
commotions, resigned the regency into the hands of Don Alvar 
Nunez de Lara, the head of that ambitious house. First, how¬ 
ever, she made him kneel and swear that he would conduct 
himself toward the youthful king, Enrique, as a thorough friend 
and a loyal vassal, guarding his person from all harm; that he 
would respect the property of individuals, and undertake 
nothing of importance without the counsel and consent of 
Queen Berenguela. Furthermore, that he would guard and 
respect the hereditary possessions of Queen Berenguela, left to 
her by her father, and would always serve her as his sovereign, 
the daughter of his deceased king. All this Don Alvar Nunez 
solemnly swore upon the sacred evangelists and the holy 
cross. 

No sooner, however, had he got the young king in his power, 
than he showed the ambition, rapacity, and arrogance of his 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


57 


nature. He prevailed upon the young king to make him a 
count; he induced him to hold cortes without the presence of 
Queen Berenguela; issuing edicts in the king’s name, he ban¬ 
ished refractory nobles, giving their offices and lands to his 
brothers; he levied exactions on rich and poor, and, what is 
still more flagrant, he extended these exactions to the Church. 
In vain did Queen Berenguela remonstrate; in vain did the 
Dean of Toledo thunder forth an excommunication; he scoffed 
at them both, for in the king’s name he persuaded himself he' 
had a tower of strength. He even sent a letter to Queen Be¬ 
renguela in the name of the young king, demanding of her the 
castles, towns, and ports which had been left to her by her 
father. The queen was deeply grieved at this letter, and sent 
a reply to the king that, when she saw him face to face, she 
would do with those possessions whatever he should command, 
as her brother and sovereign. 

On receiving this message, the young king was shocked and 
distressed that such a demand should have been made in his 
name; but he was young and inexperienced, and could not 
openly contend with a man of Don Alvar’s overbearing char¬ 
acter. He wrote secretly to the queen, however, assuring her 
that the demand had been made without his knowledge, and 
saying how gladly he would come to her if he could, and be 
relieved from the thraldom of Don Alvar. 

In this way the unfortunate prince was made an instrument 
in the hands of this haughty and arrogant nobleman of inflict¬ 
ing all kinds of wrongs and injuries upon his subjects. Don 
Alvar constantly kept him with him, carrying him from place 
to place of his dominions, wherever his presence was necessary 
to effect some new measure of tyranny. He even endeavored 
to negotiate a marriage between the young king and some 
neighboring princess, in order to retain an influence over him, 
but in this he was unsuccessful. 

For three years had he maintained this iniquitious sway, un¬ 
til one day in 1217, when the young king was with him at 
Palencia, and was playing with some youthful companions in 
the court-yard of the episcopal palace, a tile, either falling 
from the roof of a tower, or sportively thrown by one of his 
companions, struck him in the head, and inflicted a wound of 
which he presently died. 

This was a fatal blow to the power of Don Alvar. To secure 
himself from any sudden revulsion in the popular mind, he 
determined to conceal the death of the king as long as pos* 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


J8 

sible, and gave out that he had retired to the fortress of 
Tariego, whither he had the body conveyed, as if still living. 
He continued to issue dispatches from time to time in the 
name of the king, and made various excuses for his non- 
appearance in public. 

Queen Berenguela soon learned the truth. According to the 
laws of Castile she was heiress to the crown, but she resolved 
to transfer it to her son Fernando, who, being likewise ac¬ 
knowledged successor to the crown of Leon, would unite the 
two kingdoms under his rule. To effect her purpose she 
availed herself of the cunning of her enemy, kept secret her 
knowledge of the death of her brother, and sent three of her 
confidential cavaliers, Don Lope Diaz de Haro, Senor of Bis¬ 
cay, and Don Gonzalo Ruiz Giron, and Don Alonzo Tellez de 
Meneses, to her late husband, Alfonso IX., King of Leon, who, 
with her son Fernando, was then at Toro, entreating him to 
send the latter to her to protect her from the tyranny of Don 
Alvar. The prudent mother, however, forebore to let King 
Alfonso know of her brother’s death, lest it might awaken in 
him ambitious thoughts about the Castilian crown. 

This mission being sent, she departed with the cavaliers of 
her party for Palencia. The death of the King Enrique being 
noised about, she was honored as Queen of Castile, and Don 
Tello, the bishop, came forth in procession to receive her. The 
next day she proceeded to the castle of Duenas, and, on its 
making some show of resistance, took it by force. 

The cavaliers who were with the queen endeavored to effect 
a reconciliation between her and Don Alvar, seeing that the 
latter had powerful connections, and through his partisans 
and retainers held possession of the principal towns and for¬ 
tresses ; that haughty nobleman, however, would listen to no 
proposals, unless the Prince Fernando was given into his 
guardianship, as had been the Prince Enrique. 

In the mean time the request of Queen Berenguela had been 
granted by her late husband, the King of Leon, and her son 
Fernando hastened to meet her. The meeting took place at 
the castle of Otiella, and happy was the anxious mother once 
more to embrace her son. At her command the cavaliers in 
her train elevated him on the trunk of an elm-tree for a throne, 
and hailed him king with great acclamations. 

They now proceeded to Valladolid, which at that time was \ 
great and wealthy town. Here the nobility and chivalry oi 
Estremadura and othe** narts hastened to pay homage to :ha 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


59 


queen. A stage was erected in the market-place, where the 
assembled states acknowledged her for queen and swore fealty 
to her. She immediately, in presence of her nobles, prelates, 
and people, renounced the crown in favor of her son. The air 
rang with the shouts of ‘ ‘ Long live Fernando, King of Cas¬ 
tile !” The bishops and clergy then conducted the king in state 
fco the church. This was on the 31st of August, 1217, and 
about three months from the death of King Enrique. 

Fernando was at this time about eighteen years of age, an 
accomplished cavalier, having been instructed in everything 
befitting a prince and a warrior. 


• CHAPTER II. 

KING ALFONSO OF LEON RAVAGES CASTILE. —CAPTIVITY OF DON 
ALVAR.—DEATH OF THE LARAS. 

King Alfonso of Leon was exceedingly exasperated at the 
furtive manner in which his son Fernando had left him, with¬ 
out informing him of King Henry’s death. He considered, 
and perhaps with reason, the transfer of the crown of Castile 
by Berenguela to her son, as a manoeuvre to evade any rights 
.or claims which he, King Alfonso, might have over her, not¬ 
withstanding her divorce; and he believed that both mother 
and son had conspired to deceive and outwit him; and, what 
was especially provoking, they had succeeded. It was natural 
for King Alfonso to have become by this time exceedingly 
irritable and sensitive; he had been repeatedly thwarted in his 
dearest concerns; excommunicated out of two wives 'by the 
Pope, and now, as he conceived, cajoled out of a kingdom. 

In his wrath he flew to arms—a prompt and customary re¬ 
course of kings in those days when they had no will to consult 
but their own; and notwithstanding the earnest expostulations 
and entreaties of holy men, he entered Castile with an army, 
ravaging the legitimate inheritance of his son, as if it had 
been the territory of an enemy. He was seconded in his out- 
rages by Count Alvar Nunez de Lara and his two bellicose 
brothers, who hoped still to retain power by rallying under his 
standard. 

There were at this time full two thousand cavaliers with the 
vouthful king, resolute men, well armed and well appointed, 



60 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


and they urged him to lead then, against the King of Leon. 
Queen Berenguela, however, interposed and declared her son 
should never be guilty of the impiety of taking up arms 
against his father. By her advice King Fernando sent an 
embassy to his father, expostulating with him, and telling 
him that he ought to be thankful to God that Castile was in 
the hands of a son disposed at all times to honor and defend 
him, instead of a stranger who might prove a dangerous foe. 

King Alfonso, however, was not so to be appeased. By the 
ambassadors he sent proposals to Queen Berenguela that they 
re-enter into w T edlock, for which he would procure a dispensa¬ 
tion from the Pope; they would then be jointly sovereigns of 
both Castile and Leon, and the Prince Fernando, their son, 
should inherit both crowns. But the virtuous Berenguela 
recoiled from this proposal of a second nuptials. “God for¬ 
bid,” replied she, “that I should return to a sinful marriage; 
and as to the crown of Castile, it now belongs to my son, to 
whom I have given it with the sanction of God and the good 
men of this realm.” 

King Alfonso was more enraged than ever by this reply, 
and being incited and aided by Count Alvar and his faction, 
he resumed his ravages, laying waste the country and burn¬ 
ing the villages. He would have attacked Duenas, but found 
that place strongly garrisoned by Diego Lopez de Haro and 
Euy Diaz de los Cameros; he next marched upon Burgos, but 
that place was equally well garrisoned by Lope Diez de Faro 
and other stout Castilian cavaliers; so perceiving his son to be 
more firmly seated upon the throne than he had imagined, and 
that all his own menaces and ravages were unavailing, he re¬ 
turned deeply chagrined to his kingdom. 

King Fernando, in obedience to the dictates of his mother as 
well as of his own heart, abstained from any acts of retalia¬ 
tion on his father; but he turned his arms against Munon and 
Lerma and Lara, and other places which either belonged to, or 
held out for, Count Alvar, and having subdued them, pro¬ 
ceeded to Burgos, the capital of his kingdom, where he was 
received by the bishop and clergy with great solemnity, and 
whither the nobles and chivalry from all parts of Castile has¬ 
tened to rally round his throne. The turbulent Count Alvar 
Nunez de Lara and his brothers retaining other fortresses too 
strong to be easily taken, refused all allegiance, and made rav¬ 
aging excursions over the country. The prudent and provi¬ 
dent Berenguela, therefore, while at Burgos, seeing that the 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 61 

troubles and contentions of the kingdom would cause great 
expense and prevent much revenue, gathered together all her 
jewels of gold and silver and precious stones, and all her plate 
and rich silks, and other precious things, and caused them to 
be sold, and gave the money to her son to defray the cost of 
these civil wars. 

King Fernando and his mother departed shortly afterward 
for Palencia; on their way they had to pass by Herrera, which 
at that time was the stronghold of Count Alvar. When the 
king came in sight, Count Fernan Nufiez, with his battalions, 
was on the banks of the river, but drew within the walls. As 
the king had to pass close by with his retinue, he ordered his 
troops to be put in good order, and gave it in charge to Alonzo 
Tellez and Suer Tellez and Alvar Ruyz to protect the flanks. 

As the royal troops drew near, Count Alvar, leaving his 
people in the town, sallied forth with a few cavaliers to regard 
the army as it passed. Affecting great contempt for the 
youthful king and his cavaliers, he stood drawn up on a 
rising ground with his attendants, looking down upon the 
troops with scornful aspect, and rejecting all advice to retire 
into the town. 

As the king and his immediate escort came nigh, their at¬ 
tention was attracted to this little body of proud warriors 
drawn up upon a bank and regarding them so loftily; and 
Alonzo Tellez and Suer Tellez, looking more closely, recognized 
Don Alvar, and putting spurs to their horses, dashed up the 
bank, followed by several cavaliers. Don AJvar repented of 
his vain confidence too late, and seeing great numbers urging 
toward him, turned his reins aad retreated toward the town. 
Still his stomach was too high for absolute flight, and the 
others, who spurred after him at full speed, overtook him. 
Throwing himself from his horse, he covered himself with his 
shield and prepared for defence. Alonzo Tellez, however, 
called to his men not to kill the count, but to take him pri- 
soner. He was accordingly captured, with several of his fob 
lowers, and borne off to the king and queen. The count had 
everything to apprehend from their vengeance for his mis¬ 
deeds. They used no personal harshness, however, but de¬ 
manded from him that he should surrender all the castles and 
strong places held by the retainers and partisans of his brothers 
and himself, that he should furnish one hundred horsemen to 
aid in their recovery, and should remain a prisoner until those 
places were all in the possession of the crown. 


62 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Captivity broke the haughty spirit of Don Alvar. He agreed 
to those conditions, and until they should be fulfilled was con¬ 
signed to the charge of Gonsalvo Ruiz Giron, and confined in 
the castle of Valladolid. The places were delivered up in the 
course of a few months, and thus King Fernando became 
strongly possessed of his kingdom. 

Stripped of power, state, and possessions, Count Alvar and 
his brothers, after an ineffectual attempt to rouse the King of 
keon to another campaign against his son, became savage 
and desperate, and made predatory excursions, pillaging the 
country, until Count Alvar fell mortally ill of hydropsy. 
Struck with remorse and melancholy, he repaired to Toro and 
entered the chivalrous order of Santiago, that he might gain 
the indulgences granted by the Pope to those who die in that 
order, and hoping, says an ancient chronicler, to oblige God 
as it were, by that religious ceremony, to pardon his sins.* 
H is illness endured seven months, and he was reduced to such 
poverty that at his death there was not money enough left by 
him to convey his body to Ucles, where he had requested to be 
buried, nor to pay for tapers for his funeral. When Queen 
Berenguela heard this, she ordered that the funeral should be 
honorably performed at her own expense, and sent a cloth of 
gold to cover the bier.f 

The brother of Count Alvar, Don Fernando, abandoned his 
country in despair and went to Marocco, where he was well 
received by the miramamolin, and had lands and revenues 
assigned to him. He became a great favorite among the 
Moors, to whom he used to recount his deeds in the civil wars 
of Castile. At length he fell dangerously ill, and caused him¬ 
self to be taken to a suburb inhabited by Christians. There 
happened to be there at that time one Don Gonsalvo, a knight 
of the order of the Hospital of St. Jean d’Acre, and who had 
been in the service of Pope Innocent III. Don 'Fernando, 
finding his end approaching, entreated of the knight his re¬ 
ligious habit that he might die in it. His request was granted, 
and thus Count Fernando died in the habit of a Knight Hos¬ 
pitaller of St. Jean d’Acre, in Elbora, a suburb of Marocco. 
His body was afterward brought to Spain, and interred in a 
town on the banks of the Pisuerga, in which repose likewise 
the remains of his wife and children. 


* Cronica Gotica, por Don Alonzo Nunez de Castro, p. 17. 
t Cronica General de Espana, pt. 3, p. 370. 



CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


63 


The Count Gonsalvo Nunez de Lara, the third of these 
brothers, also took refuge among the Moors. He was seized 
with violent disease in the city of Baeza, where he died. His 
body was conveyed to Campos a Zalmos, which appertained 
to the Friars of the Temple, where the holy fraternity gave 
it the rites of sepulture with all due honor. Such was the 
end of these three brothers of the once proud and powerful 
house of Lara, whose disloyal deeds had harassed their coun¬ 
try and brought ruin upon themselves. 


CHAPTER III. 

MARRIAGE OF KING FERNANDO.—CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE MOORS. 
—ABEN MOHAMED, KING OF BAEZA, DECLARES HIMSELF THE 
VASSAL OF KING FERNANDO.—THEY MARCH TO JAEN.—BURN¬ 
ING OF THE TOWER.—FERNANDO COMMENCES THE BUILDING 
OF THE CATHEDRAL AT TOLEDO. 

King Fernando, aided by the sage counsels of his mother, 
reigned for some time in peace and quietness, administering 
his affairs with equity and justice. The good Queen Beren- 
guela now began to cast about her eyes in search of a suit¬ 
able alliance for her son, and had many consultations with 
the Bishop Maurice of Burgos, and other ghostly counsellors, 
thereupon. They at length agreed upon the Princess Beatrix, 
daughter of the late Philip, Emperor of Germany, and the 
Bishop Maurice and Padre Fray Pedro de Arlanza were sent 
as envoys to the Emperor Frederick II., cousin of the prin¬ 
cess, to negotiate the terms. An arrangement was happily 
effected, and the princess set out for Spain. In passing 
through France she was courteously entertained at Paris by 
King Philip, who made her rich presents. On the borders of 
Castile she was met at Vittoria by the Queen Berenguela, 
with a great train of prelates, monks, and masters of the re¬ 
ligious orders, and of abbesses and nuns, together with a 
glorious train of chivalry. In this state she was conducted 
to Burgos, where the king and all his court came forth to 
receive her, and their nuptials were celebrated with great 
pomp and rejoicing. 

King Fernando lived happily with his fail* Queen Beatrix, 



64 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


and his kingdom remained in peace; but by degrees he be¬ 
came impatient of quiet, and anxious to make war upon the 
Moors. Perhaps he felt called upon to make some signal essay 
in arms at present, having, the day before his nuptials, been 
armed a knight in the monastery of Las Huelgos, and in 
those iron days knighthood was not a matter of mere parade 
and ceremony, but called for acts of valor and proofs of stem 
endurance. 

The discreet Berenguela endeavored to dissuade her son 
from taking the field, considering him not of sufficient age. 
In all things else he was ever obedient to her counsels, and 
even to her inclinations, but it was in vain that she endeav¬ 
ored to persuade him from making war upon the infidels. 
“God,” he would say, “had put into his hand not merely a 
sceptre to govern, but a sword to avenge his country.” 

It was fortunate for the good cause, moreover, and the 
Spanish chroniclers, that while the queen-mother was endeav¬ 
oring to throw a damper on the kindling fire of her son, a 
worthy prelate was at hand to stir it up into a blaze. This 
was the illustrious historian Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, 
who now preached a crusade against the Moors, promising 
like indulgences with those granted to the warriors for the 
Holy Sepulchre. The consequence was a great assemblage of 
troops from all parts at Toledo. 

King Fernando was prevented for a time from taking the 
field in person, but sent in advance Don Lope Diaz de Haro 
and Ruy Gonsalvo de Giron and Alonzo Tellez de Meneses, 
with five hundred cavaliers well armed and mounted. The 
very sight of them effected a conquest over Aben Mohamed, 
the Moorish king of Baeza, insomuch that he sent an em¬ 
bassy to King Fernando, declaring himself his vassal. 

When King Fernando afterwards took the field, he was 
joined by this Moorish ally at the Navas or plains of Tolosa; 
who was in company with him when the king marched to 
Jaen, to the foot of a tower, and set fire to it, whereupon those 
Moors who remained in the tower were burned to death, and 
those who leaped from the walls were received on the points 
of lances. ~ 

Notwithstanding the burnt-offering of this tower, Heaven 
did not smile upon the attempt of King Fernando to reduce 
the city of Jaen. He was obliged to abandon the siege, but 
consoled himself by laying waste the country. He was more 
successful elsewhere. He carried the strong town of Priego 

£ 


CHRONICLE OF FERNA NDO THE SAINT. 05 

by assault, and gave the garrison their lives on condition of 
yielding up all their property, and paying, moreover, eighty 
thousand maravedis of silver. For the payment of this sum 
they were obliged to give as hostages fifty-five damsels of 
great beauty, and fifty cavaliers of rank, besides nine hundred 
of the common people. The king divided his hostages among 
his bravest cavaliers and the religious orders; but his vassal, 
the Moorish king of Baeza, obtained the charge of the Moor¬ 
ish damsels. 

The king then attacked Loxa, and his men & *aled the walls 
and burnt the gates, and made themselves masters of the 
place. He then led his army into the Yega of Granada, the 
inhabitants of which submitted to become his vassals, and 
gave up all the Christian captives in that city, amounting to 
thirteen hundred. 

Aben Mohamed, king of Baeza, then delivered to King Fer¬ 
nando the towers of Martos and Andujar, and the king gave 
them to Don Alvar Perez de Castro, and placed with him 
Don Gonzalo Ybanez, Master of Calatrava, and Tello Alonzo 
Meneses, son of Don Alonzo Tellez, and other stout cavaliers, 
fitted to maintain frontier posts. These arrangements being 
made, and having ransacked every mountain and valley, and 
taken many other places not herein specified, King Fernando 
returned in triumph to Toledo, where he was joyfully received 
by his mother Berenguela and his wife Beatrix. 

Clerical historians do not fail to record with infinite sati .iac- 
tion a single instance of the devout and zealous spirit which 
King Fernando had derived from his constant communion 
with the reverend fathers of the Church. As the king was 
one day walking with his ghostly adviser the archbishop, in 
the principal church of Toledo, which was built in the Moresco 
fashion, having been a mosque of the infidels, it occurred, or 
more probably was suggested to him, that, since God had 
aided him to increase his kingdom, and had given him such 
victories over the enemies of his holy faith, it became him to 
rebuild his holy temple, which was ancient and falling to 
decay, and to adorn it richly with the spoils taken from the 
Moors. The thought was promptly carried into effect. The 
king and the archbishop laid the first stone with great solem¬ 
nity, and* in the fulness of time accomplished that mighty 
cathedral of Toledo, which remains the wonder and admira¬ 
tion of after ages. 


06 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


CHAPTER TV. 

ASSASSINATION OF ABEN MOHAMED.—HIS HEAD CARRIED AS A 
PRESENT TO ABULLALE, THE MOORISH KING OF SEVILLE.— 
ADVANCE OF THE CHRISTIANS INTO ANDALUSIA. — ABULLALE 
PURCHASES A TRUCE. 

The worthy Fray Antonio Agapida records various other 
victories N and achievements of King Fernando in a subsequent 
campaign against the Moors of Andalusia; in the course of 
which his camp was abundantly supplied with grain by his 
vassal Aben Mohamed, the Moorish king of Baeza. The assist¬ 
ance rendered by that Moslem monarch to the Christian forces 
in their battles against those of his own race and his own faith, 
did not meet with the reward it merited. “ Doubtless, ” says 
Antonio Agapida, “because he halted half way in the right 
path, and did not turn thorough renegado.” It appeal's that 
his friendship for the Christians gave great disgust to his sub¬ 
jects, and some of them rose upon him, while he was sojourn¬ 
ing in the city of Cordova, and sought to destroy him. Aben 
Mohamed fled by a gate leading to the gardens, to take shelter 
in the tower of Almodovar; but the assassins overtook him, 
and slew him on a hill near the tower. They then cut off his 
head and carried it as a present to Abullale, the Moorish king 
of Seville, expecting to be munificently rewarded; but that 
monarch gave command that their beads should be struck off 
and their bodies thrown to the dogs, "as traitors to their liege 
lords.* 

King Fernando was grieved when he heard of the assassina¬ 
tion of his vassal, and feared the death of Aben Mohamed 
might lead to a rising of the Moors. He sent notice to Andu- 
jar, to Don Alvar Perez de Castro and Alonzo Tellez de Mene- 
ses, to be on their guard ; but the Moors, fearing punishment 
for some rebellious movements, abandoned the town, and it fell 
into the hands of the king. The Moors of Martos did the like. 
The Alcazar of Baeza yielded also to the king, who placed in it 
Don Lope Diaz de Haro, with five hundred men. 

Abullale, the Moorish sovereign of Seville, was alarmed at 


* Cron. Gea de Espafia, pt. 4, fol. 3?3. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 37 

seeing the advances which the Christians were making in An¬ 
dalusia ; and attempted to wrest from their hands these newly 
acquired places. He marched upon Martos, which was not 
strongly walled. The Countess Dona Yrenia, wife to Don 
Alvar Perez de Castro, was in this place, and her husband 
was absent. Don Tello Alonzo, with a Spanish force, hastened 
to her assistance. Finding the town closely invested, he 
formed his men into a troop, and endeavored to cut his way 
through the enemy. A rude conflict ensued; the cavaliers 
fought their way forward, and Christian and Moor arrived 
pell-mell at the gate of the town. Here the press was exces¬ 
sive. Fernan Gomez *de Pudiello, a stout cavalier, who bore 
the pennon of Don Tello Alonzo, was slain, and the same fate 
would have befallen Don Tello himself, but that a company of 
esquires salhed from the town to his rescue. 

King Abuflale now encircled the town, and got possession of 
the Pena, or rock, which commands it, killing two hundred 
Christians who defended it. 

Provisions began to fail the besieged, and they were reduced 
to slay their horses for food, and even to eat the hides. Don 
Gonsalvo Ybanez, master of Calatrava, who was in Baeza, 
hearing of the extremity of the place, came suddenly with 
seventy men and effected an entrance. The augmentation 
of the garrison only served to increase the famine, without 
being sufficient in force to raise the siege. At length word 
was brought to Don Alvar Perez de Castro, who was with the 
king at Guadalaxara, of the imminent danger to which his 
wife was exposed. He instantly set off for her relief, accom¬ 
panied by several cavaliers of note, and a strong force. They 
succeeded in getting into Martos, recovered the Pena, or rock, 
and made such vigorous defence that Abullale abandoned the 
siege in despair. In the following year King Fernando led his 
host to take revenge upon this Moorish king of Seville; but the 
latter purchased a truce for one year with three hundred thou¬ 
sand maravedis of silver.* 


* Cron. Gen. de Espafia, pt. 4, c. ii. 



68 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


CHAPTER V. 

ABEN HUD.—ABULLALE PURCHASES ANOTHER YEAR’S TRUCE.— 
FERNANDO HEARS OF THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER, THE KING 
OF LEON, WHILE PRESSING THE SIEGE OF JAEN. — HE BECOMES 
SOVEREIGN OF THE TWO KINGDOMS OF LEON AND CASTILE. 

About this time a valiant sheik, named Aben Abdallar 
Mohammed ben Hud, but commonly called Aben Hud, was 
effecting a great revolution in Moorish affairs. He was of the 
lineage of Aben Alfange, and bitterly opposed to the sect of 
Almohades, who for a long time had exercised a tyrannical 
sway. Stirring up the Moors of Murcia to rise upon their op- 
pressors, he put himself at their head, massacred all the Almo¬ 
hades that fell into his hands, and made himself sheik or 
king of that region. He purified the mosques with water, 
after the manner in which Christians purify their churches, as 
though they had been defiled by the Almohades. Aben Hud 
acquired a name among those of his religion fo! justice and 
good faith as well as valor; and after some opposition, gained 
sway over all Andalusia. This brought him in collision with 
King Fernando . . . 

HP (Something is wanting here.) * 

laying waste fields of grain. The Moorish sovereign of Seville 
purchased another year’s truce of him for three hundred thou¬ 
sand maravedis of silver. Aben Hud, on the other hand, col¬ 
lected a great force and marched to oppose him, but did not 
dare to give him battle. He went, therefore, upon Merida, 
and fought with King Alfonso of Leon, father of King Fernan¬ 
do, where, however, he met with complete discomfiture. 

In the following year King Fernando repeated his invasion 


* The hiatus, here noted by the author, has evidently arisen from the loss of a 
leaf of his manuscript. The printed line which precedes the parenthesis concludes 
page 32 of the manuscript; the line which follows it begins page 31. The interme¬ 
diate page is wanting. I presume the author did not become conscious of his loss 
until he had resorted to his manuscript for revision, and that he could not depend 
upon his memory to supply what was wanting without a fresh resort to authorities 
not at hand. Hence a postponement and ultimate omission. The missing leaf would 
scarce have filled half a page of print, and, it would seem from the context, hiuk: 
have related the invasion of Andalusia by Fernando and the ravages committed 
by his armies.— Ed. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


69 


of Andalusia, and was pressing the siege of the city of Jaen, 
which he assailed by means of engines discharging stones, 
when a courier arrived in all speed from his mother, informing 
him that his father Alfonso was dead, and urging him to pro¬ 
ceed instantly to Leon, to enforce his pretensions to the crown. 
Kmg Fernando accordingly raised the siege of Jaen, sending 
his engines to Martos, and repaired to Castile, to consult with 
his mother, who was his counsellor on all occasions. 

It appeared that in his last will King Alfonso had named his 
two daughters joint heirs to the crown. Some of the Leonese 
and Gallegos were disposed to place the Prince Alonzo, brother 
to King Fernando, on the throne; but he had listened to the 
commands of his mother, and had resisted all suggestions of 
the kind; the larger part of the kingdom, including the most 
important cities, had declared for Fernando. 

Accompanied by his mother, King Fernando proceeded 
instantly into the kingdom of Leon with a powerful force. 
Wherever they went the cities threw open their gates to them. 
The princesses Dona Sanclia and Dona Dulce, with their 
mother Theresa, would have assembled a force to oppose them, 
but the prelates were all in favor of King Fernando. On his 
approach to Leon, the bishops and clergy and all the principal 
inhabitants came forth to receive him, and conducted him to 
the cathedral, where he received their homage, and was pro¬ 
claimed king, with the Te Deums of the choir and the shouts 
of the people. 

Doha Theresa, who, with her daughters, was in Gallicia, find¬ 
ing the kingdom thus disposed of, sent to demand provision 
for herself and the two princesses, who in fact were step¬ 
sisters of King Fernando. Queen Berenguela, though she had 
some reason not to feel kindly disposed toward Doha Theresa, 
who she might think had been exercising a secret influence 
over her late husband, yet suppressed all such feelings, and 
undertook to repair in person to Gallicia, and negotiate this 
singular family question. She had an interview with Queen 
Theresa at Valencia de Merlio in Gallicia, and arranged a noble 
dower for her, and an annual revenue to each of her daughters 
of thirty thousand maravedis of gold. The king then had a 
meeting with his sisters at Benevente, where they resigned all 
pretensions to the throne. All the fortified places which held 
out for them were given up, and thus Fernando became undis¬ 
puted sovereign of the two kingdoms of Castile and Leon. 


70 


MOORISH CHRONICLES, 


CHAPTER VI. 

EXPEDITION OF THE PRINCE ALONZO AGAINST THE MOORS.— EN¬ 
CAMPS ON THE BANKS OF THE GUADALETE.— ABEN HUD MARCHES 
OUT FROM XEREZ AND GIVES BATTLE.—PROWESS OF GARCIA 
PEREZ DE VARGAS.—FLIGHT AND PURSUIT OF THE MOORS.— 
MIRACLE OF THE BLESSED SANTIAGO. 

King Fernando III., having, through the sage counsel and 
judicious management of his mother, made this amicable 
agreement with his step-sisters, by which he gained possession 
of their inheritance, now found his territories to extend from 
the Bay of Biscay to the vicinity of the Guadalquivir, and from 
the borders of Portugal to those of Aragon and Valencia; and 
in addition to his title of King of Castile and Leon, called him¬ 
self King of Spain by seigniorial right. Being at peace with all 
his Christian neighbors, he now prepared to carry on, with 
more zeal and vigor than ever, his holy wars against the 
infidels. While making a progress, however, through his 
dominions, administering justice, he sent his brother, the 
Prince Alonzo, to make an expedition into the country of the 
Moors, and to attack the newly risen power of Aben Hud. 

As the Prince Alonzo was young and of little experience, the 
king sent Don Alvar Perez de Castro, the Castilian, with him 
as captain, he being stout of heart, strong of hand, and skilled 
in war. The prince and his captain went from Salamanca to 
Toledo, where they recruited their force with a troop of cav¬ 
alry. Thence they proceeded to Andujar, where they sent out 
corredores, or light foraging troops r who laid waste the 
country, plundering and destroying and bringing off great 
booty. Thence ihey directed their ravaging course toward 
Cordova, assaulted and carried Palma, and put all its inhabi¬ 
tants to the sword. Following the fertile valley of the Gua¬ 
dalquivir, they scoured the vicinity of Seville, and continued 
onward for Xerez, sweeping off cattle and sheep from the 
pastures of Andalusia; driving on long cavalgadas of horses 
and mules laden with spoil; until the earth shook with the 
tramping of their feet, and their course was marked by clouds 
of dust and the smoke of burning villages. 

In this desolating foray they were joined by two hundred 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. ft 

horse and three hundred foot, Moorish allies, or rather vassals, 
being led by the son of Aben Mohamed, the king of Baeza. 

Arrived within sight of Xerez, they x>itched their tents on 
the banks of the Guadalete—that fatal river, sadly renowned 
in the annals of Spain for the overthrow of Roderick and the 
perdition of the kingdom. 

Here a good watch was set over the captured flocks and 
herds which covered the adjacent meadows, while the soldiers, 
fatigued with ravage, gave themselves up to repose on the 
banks of the river, or indulged in feasting and revelry, or 
gambled with each other for their booty. 

In the meantime Aben Hud, hearing of this inroad, sum¬ 
moned all his chivalry of the seaboard of Andalusia to meet 
him in Xerez. They hastened to obey his call; every leader 
spurred for Xerez with his band of vassals. Thither came also 
the king of the Azules, with seven hundred horsemen, Moors 
of Africa, light, vigorous, and active; and the city was full of 
troops. 

The camp of Don Alonzo had a formidable appearance at a 
distance, from the flocks and herds which surrounded it, the 
vast number of sumpter mules, and the numerous captives? 
but when Aben Hud came to reconnoitre it, he found that its 
aggregate force did not exceed three thousand five hundred 
men—a mere handful in comparison to. his army, and those 
encumbered with cattle and booty. He anticipated, therefore, 
an easy victory. He now sallied forth from the city, and took 
his position in the olive-fields between the Christians and the 
city; while the African horsemen were stationed on each wing r 
with instructions to hem in the Christians on either side, for he 
was only apprehensive of their escaping. It is even said that 
he ordered great quantities of cord to be brought from the 
city, and osier bands to be made by the soldiery, wherewith to 
bind the multitude of prisoners about to fall into their hands. 
His whole force he divided into seven battalions, each contain¬ 
ing from fifteen hundred to two thousand cavalry. With 
these he prepared to give battle. 

When the Christians thus saw an overwhelming force in 
front, cavalry hovering on either flank, and the deep waters of 
the Guadalete behind them, they felt the peril of their situa¬ 
tion. • 

In this emergency Alvar Perez de Castro showed himself 
the able captain that he had been represented. Though ap¬ 
parently deferring to the prince in council, he virtually took 


72 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


the command, riding among tne troops lightly armed, with 
truncheon in hand, encouraging every one by word and look 
and fearless demeanor. To give the most formidable appear¬ 
ance to their little host, he ordered that as many as possible of 
the foot-soldiers should mount upon the mules and beasts of 
burden, and form a troop to be kept in reserve. Before the 
battle he conferred the honor of knighthood on Garcia Perez- 
de Vargas, a cavalier destined to gain renown for hardy deeds 
of arms. 

When the troops were all ready for the field, the prince 
exhorted them as good Christians to confess their sins and 
obtain absolution. There was a goodly number of priests and 
friars with the army, as there generally was with all the plun¬ 
dering expeditions of this holy war, but there were not enough 
to confess all the army; those, therefore, who could not have 
a priest or monk for the purpose, confessed to each other. 

Among the cavaliers were two noted for their valor; but 
who, though brothers-in-law, lived in mortal feud. One was 
Diego Perez, vassal to Alvar Perez and brother to him who 
had just been armed knight; the other was Pero Miguel, both 
natives of Toledo. Diego Perez was the one who had given 
cause of offence. He now approached his adversary and asked 
his pardon for that day only; that, in a time of such mortal 
peril, there might not be enmity and malice in their hearts. 
The priests added their exhortations to this request, but Pero 
Miguel sternly refused to pardon. When this was told to the 
prince and Don Alvar, they likewise entreated Don Miguel to 
pardon his brother-in-law. “I will,” replied he, “if he will 
come to my arms and embrace me as a brother.” But Diego 
Perez declined the fraternal embrace, for he saw danger in the 
eye of Pero Miguel, and he knew his savage Strength and 
savage nature, and suspected that he meant to strangle him. 
So Pero Miguel went into battle without pardoning his enemy 
who had implored forgiveness. 

At this time, say the old chroniclers, the shouts and yells of 
the Moorish army, the sounds of their cymbals, kettle-drums, 
and other instruments of warlike music, were so great that 
heaven and earth seemed commingled and confounded. In 
regarding the battle about to overwhelm him, Alvar Perez saw 
that the only chance was to form the whole army into one 
mass, and by a headlong assault to break the centre of the 
enemy. In this emergency he sent word to the prince, who 
was in the rear with the reserve and had five hundred cap* 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


73 


tives in charge, to strike oft the heads of the captives and join 
him with the whole reserve. This bloody order was obeyed. 
The prince caihe to the front, all formed together in one dense 
column, and then, with the war-cry “Santiago! Santiago! Cas¬ 
tile! Castile!”charged upon the centre of the enemy. The 
Moors’ line was broken by the shock, squadron after squadron 
was thrown into confusion, Moors and Christians were inter¬ 
mingled, until the field became one scene of desperate, chance- 
medley fighting. Every Christian cavalier fought as if the 
salvation of the field depended upon his single arm. Garcia 
Perez de Vargas, who had been knighted just before the battle, 
proved himself worthy of the honor. lie had three horses 
killed under him, and engaged in a desperate combat with tlio 
king of the Azules, whom at length he struck dead from hi3 
horse. The king had crossed from Africa on a devout expedi¬ 
tion in the cause of the prophet Mahomet. “Verily,” says 
Antonio Agapida, “he had his reward.” 

Diego Perez was not behind his brother in prowess; and 
Heaven favored him in that deadly fight, notwithstanding that 
he had not been pardoned by his enemy. In the heat of the 
battle he had broken both sword and lance; whereupon, tear¬ 
ing off a great knotted limb from an olive-tree, he laid about 
him with such vigor and manhood that he who got one blow 
in the head from that war-club never needed another. Don 
Alvar Perez, who witnessed his feats, was seized with delight. 
At each fresh blow that cracked a Moslem skull he would cry 
out, “ Assi! Assi! Diego, Machacha! Machacha!” (So! So! Diego, 
smash them! smash them!) and from that day forward that 
strong-handed cavalier went by the name of Diego Machacha, 
or Diego the Smasher, and it remained the surname of several 
of his lineage. 

At length the Moors gave way and fled for the gates of 
Xerez; being hotly pursued they stumbled over the bodies of the 
slain, and thus many were taken prisoners. At the gates the 
press was so great that they killed each other in striving to 
enter; and the Christian sword made slaughter under the 
walls. 

The Christians gathered spoils of the field, after this victory, 
until they were fatigued with collecting them, and the precious 
articles found in the Moorish tents were beyond calculation. 
Their camp-fires were supplied with the shafts of broken 
lances, and they found ample use for the cords and osier bands 
which the Moors had provided to bind their expected captives. 


74 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


It was a theme of much marvel and solemn meditation that 
of all the distinguished cavaliers who entered into this battle, 
not one was lost, excepting the same Pero Miguel who refused 
to pardon his adversary. What became of him no one could 
tell. The last that was seen of him he was in the midst of the 
enemy, cutting down and overturning, for he was a valiant 
warrior and of prodigious strength. When the battle and 
pursuit were at an end, and the troops were recalled by sound 
of trumpet, he did not appear. His tent remained empty. 
The field of battle was searched, but he was nowhere to be 
found. Some supposed that, in his fierce eagerness to make 
havoc among the Moors, he had entered the gates of the city 
and there been slain: but his fate remained a mere matter of 
conjecture, and the whole was considered an awful warning 
that no Christian should go into battle without pardoning 
those who asked forgiveness. 

“ On this day,” says the worthy Agapida, “it pleased Heaven 
to work one of its miracles in favor of the Christian host; for 
the blessed Santiago appeared in the air on a white horse, with 
a white banner in one hand and a sword in the other, accom¬ 
panied by a band of cavaliers in white. This miracle,” he 
adds, “was beheld by many men of verity and worth,” pro¬ 
bably the monks and priests who accompanied the army; “as 
well as by members of the Moors, ivho declared that the great¬ 
est slaughter was effected by those sainted ivarriors. ” 

It may be as well to add that Fray Antonio Agapida is 
supported in this marvellous fact by Rodrigo, Archbishop of 
Toledo, one of the most learned and pious men of the age, who 
lived at the time and records it in his chronicle. It is a matter, 
therefore, placed beyond the doubts of the profane. 

Note by the Editor.—A memorandum at the foot of this page of the author’s 
manuscript, reminds him to “ notice death of Queen Beatrix about this time,” but 
the text continues silent on the subject. According to Mariana, she died in the city 
of Toro in 1235, before the siege of Cordova. Another authority gives the 5th of 
November, 1236, as the date of the decease, which would be some months after the 
downfall of that renowned city. Her body was interred in the nunnery of Las 
Huelgas at Burgos, and many vears afterward removed to Seville, where reposed 
the remains of her husband. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


75 


CHAPTER VII. 

A BOLD ATTEMPT UPON CORDOVA, THE SEAT OF MOORISH POWER. 

About this time certain Christian cavaliers of the frontiers 
received information from Moorish captives that the noble 
fity of Cordova was negligently guarded, so that the suburbs 
might easily be surprised. They immediately concerted a 
bold attempt, and sent to Pedro and Alvar Perez, who were 
at Martos, entreating them to aid them with their vassals. 
Having collected a sufficient force, and prepared scaling-lad¬ 
ders, they approached the city on a dark night in January, 
amid showers of rain and howling blasts, which prevented 
their footsteps being heard. Arrived at the foot of the ram¬ 
parts, they listened, but could hear no sentinel. The guards 
had shrunk into the watch-towers for shelter from the pelting 
storm, and the garrison was in profound sleep, for it was the 
midwatch of the night. 

Some, disheartened by the difficulties of the place, were for 
abandoning the attempt, but Domingo Munoz, their adalid, or 
guide, encouraged them. Silently fastening ladders together, 
so as to be of sufficient length, they placed them against one of 
the towers. The first who mounted were Alvar Colodro and 
Benito de Banos, who were dressed as Moors and spoke the 
Arabic language. The tower which they scaled is to this day 
called the tower of Alvar Colodro. Entering it suddenly but 
silently, they found four Moors asleep, whom they seized and 
threw over the battlements, and the Christians below immedi¬ 
ately dispatched them. By this time a number more of Chris¬ 
tians had mounted the ladder, and sallying forth, sword in 
hand, upon the wall, they gained possession of several towers 
and of the gate of Martos. Throwing open the gate, Pero 
Ruyz Tabur galloped in at the head of a squadron of horse, 
and by the dawn of day the whole suburbs of Cordova, called 
the Axarquia, were in their possession; the inhabitants having 
hastily gathered such of their most valuable effects as they 
could carry with them, and taken refuge in the city. 

The cavaliers now barricaded every street of the suburbs 
excepting the principal one, which was broad and straight; 
the Moors, however, made frequent sallies upon them, or 


76 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


showered down darts and arrows and stones from the walls 
and towel's of the city. The cavaliers soon found that they 
had got into warm quarters, which it would cost them blood 
and toil to maintain. They sent off messengers, therefore, to 
Don Alvar Perez, then at Martos, and to King Fernando, at 
Benevente, craving instant aid. The messenger to the king 
travelled day and night, and found the king at table; when, 
kn eeling down, he presented the letter with which he was 
charged. 

No sooner had the king read the letter than he called for 
horse and weapon. All Benevente instantly resounded with 
the clang of arms and tramp of steed; couriers galloped off in 
every direction, rousing the towns and villages to arms, and 
ordering every one to join the king on the frontier. “Cor¬ 
dova! Cordova!” was the war-cry—that proud city of the 
infidels! that seat of Moorish power! The king waited not 
to assemble a great force, but, within an hour after receiving 
the letter, was on the road with a hundred good cavaliers. 

It was the depth of winter; the rivers were swollen with 
rain. The royal party were often obliged to halt on the bank 
of some raging stream until its waters should subside. The 
king was all anxiety and impatience. Cordova! Cordova! 
was the prize to be won, and the cavaliers might be driven out 
of the suburbs before he could arrive to their assistance. 

Arrived at Cordova, he proceeded to the bridge of Alcolea, 
where he pitched his tents and displayed the royal standard. 

Before the arrival of the king, Alvar Perez had hastened 
from the castle of Martos with a body of troops, and thrown 
himself into the suburbs. Many warriors, both horse and foot, 
had likewise hastened from the frontiers and from the various 
towns to which the king had sent his mandates. Some came 
to serve the king, others out of devotion to the holy faith, 
some to gain renown, and not a few to aid in plundering the 
rich city of Cordova. There were many monks, also, who had 
come for the glory of God dnd the benefit of their convents. 

When the Christians in the suburbs saw the royal standard 
floating above the camp of the king, they shouted for joy, and 
in the exultation of the moment forgot all past dangers and 
hardships. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


77 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A SPY IN THE CHRISTIAN CAMP.—DEATH OF ABEN HUD.—A VITAL, 

BLOW TO MOSLEM POWER.—SURRENDER OF CORDOVA TO KING 

FERNANDO. 

Aden Hud, the Moorish chief, who had been defeated by 
Alvar Perez and Prince Alonzo before /Xerez, was at this time 
in Ecija with a large force, and disposed to hasten to the aid of 
Cordova, but his recent defeat had made him cautious. He 
had in his camp a Christian cavalier, Don Lorenzo Xuares by 
name, who had been banished from Castile by King Fernando. 
This cavalier offered to go as a spy into the Christian camp, 
accompanied by three Christian horsemen, and to bring ac¬ 
counts of its situation and strength. His offer was gladly 
accepted, and Aben Hud promised to do nothing with his forces 
until his return. 

Don Lorenzo set out privately with his companions, and 
when he came to the end of the bridge he alighted and took 
one of the three with him, leaving the other two to guard the 
horses. He entered the camp without impediment, and saw 
that it was small and of but little force; for, though recruits 
had repaired from all quarters, they had as yet arrived in but 
scanty numbers. 

As Don Lorenzo approached the camp he saw a montero who 
stood sentinel. ‘ ‘ Friend, ” said he, 11 do me the kindness to call 
to me some person who is about the king, as I have something 
to tell him of great importance.” The sentinel went in and 
brought out Don Otieila. Don Lorenzo took him aside and 
said, “ Do you not know me ? I am Don Lorenzo. I pray you 
tell the king that I entreat permission to enter and communi¬ 
cate matters touching his safety.” 

Don Otieila went in and awoke the king, who Whs sleeping, 
and obtained permission for Don Lorenzo to enter. When the 
king beheld him lie was wroth at his presuming to return from 
exile; but Don Lorenzo replied,—“Senor, your majesty ban¬ 
ished me to the land of the Moors to do me harm, but I believe 
it was intended by Heaven for the welfare both of your 
majesty and myself. ” Then he apprised the king of the inten- 


78 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


tion of Aben Hud to come with a great force against him, and 
of the doubts and fears he entertained lest the army of the 
king should he too powerful. Don Lorenzo, therefore, advised 
the king to draw off as many troops as could be spared from 
the suburbs of Cordova, and to give his camp as formidable an 
r aspect as possible; and that he would return and give Aben 
Hud such an account of the power of the royal camp as would 
deter him from the attack. “If,” continued Don Lorenzo, “ I 
fail in diverting him from his enterprise, I will come off with 
all my vassals and offer myself, and all I can command, for the 
service of your majesty, and hope to be accepted for my good 
intentions. As to what takes place in the Moorish camp, from 
hence, in three days, I will send your majesty letters by this 
my esquire.” 

The king thanked Don Lorenzo for his good intentions, and 
pardoned him, and took him as his vassal; and Don Lorenzo 
said: “I beseech your majesty to order that for three or four 
nights there be made great fires in various parts of the camp, 
so that in case Aben Hud should send scouts by night, there 
may be the appearance of a great host. ” The king promised it 
should be done, and Don Lorenzo took his leave; rejoining his 
companions at the bridge, they mounted their horses and trav¬ 
elled all night and returned to Ecija. 

When Don Lorenzo appeared in presence of Aben ’ Hud he 
had the air of one fatigued and careworn. To the inquiries of 
the Moor he returned answers full of alarm, magnifying the 
power and condition of the royal forces. “Senor,” added he, 
“if you would be assured of the truth of what I say, send out 
your scouts, and they will behold the Christian tents whitening 
all the banks of the Guadalquivir, and covering the country as 
the snow covers the mountains of Granada; or at night they 
will see fires on hill and dale illumining all the land.” 

This intelligence redoubled the doubts and apprehensions of 
Aben Hud. On the following day two Moorish horsemen ar¬ 
rived in all haste from Zaen, King of Valencia, informing him 
that King James of Aragon was coming against that place with 
a powerful army, and offering him the supremacy of the place 
if he would hasten with all speed to its relief. 

Aben Hud, thus perplexed between two objects, asked advice 
of his counsellors, among whom was the perfidious Don Lo¬ 
renzo. They observed that the Christians, though they had 
possession of the suburbs of Cordova, could not for a long time 
master the place. He would have time, therefore, to relieve 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


79 


Valencia, and then turn his arms and those of King Zaen 
against the host of King Fernando. 

Aben Hud listened to their advice, and marched immediately 
for Almeria, to take thence his ships to guard the port of Valen¬ 
cia. While at Almeria a Moor named Aben Arramin, and who 
was his especial favorite, invited him to a banquet. The un¬ 
suspecting Aben Hud threw off his cares for the time, and 
giving loose to convivialty in the house of his favorite, drank 
freely of the wine-cup that was insidiously pressed upon him, 
until he became intoxicated. He was then suffocated by the 
traitor in a trough of water, and it was given out that he had 
died of apoplexy. / 

At the death of Aben Hud, his host fell asunder, and every 
one hied him to his home, whereupon Don Lorenzo and the 
Christians who were with him hastened to King Fernando, by 
whom they were graciously received and admitted into his 
royal service. 

The death of Aben Hud was a vital blow to Moslem power, 
and spread confusion throughout Andalusia. When the people 
of Cordova heard of it, and of the dismemberment of his 
army, all courage withered from their hearts. Day after day 
the army of King Fernando was increasing, the roads were 
covered with foot-soldiers hastening to his standard; every 
hidalgo who could bestride a horse spurred to the hanks of the 
Guadalquivir to he present at the downfall of Cordova. The 
noblest cavaliers of Castile were continually seen marching 
into the camp with banners flying and long trains of retainers. 

The inhabitants held out as long as there was help or hope; 
but they were exhausted by frequent combats and long and in¬ 
creasing famine, and now the death of Aben Hud cut off all 
chance of succor. With sad and broken spirits, therefore, they 
surrendered their noble city to King Fernando, after a siege of 
six months and six days. The surrender took place on Sunday, 
the twenty-ninth day of July, the feast of the glorious Apostles 
St. Peter and St. Paul, in the year of the Incarnation one 
thousand two hundred and thirty-six. 

The inhabitants were permitted to march forth in personal 
safety, but to take nothing with them. “ Thus.” exclaims the 
pious Agapida, “ was the city of Cordova, the queen of the 
cities of Andalusia, which so long had been the seat of the 
power and grandeur of the Moors, cleansed from all the im¬ 
purities of Mahomet and restored to the dominion of the true 
faith.” 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


SO 

King Fernando immediately ordered the cross to be elevated 
on the tower of the principal mosque, and beside it the royal 
standard; while the bishops, the clergy, and all the people 
chanted T. Deum Laudamus, as a song of triumph for this 
great victory of the faith.* 

The king, having now gained full possession of the city, be¬ 
gan to repair, embellish, and improve it. The grand mosque, 
the greatest and most magnificent in Spain, was now converted 
into a holy Catholic church. The bishops and other clergy 
walked round it in solemn procession, sprinkling holy water 
in every nook and corner, and performing all other rites and 
ceremonies necessary to purify and sanctify it. They erected 
an altar in it, also, in honor of the Virgin, and chanted ma&ses 
with great fervor and unction. In this way they consecrated 
it to the true faith, and made it the cathedral of the city. 

In this mosque were found the bells of the church of San 
Iago in Gallicia, which the Alhagib Almanzor, in the year of 
our Redemption nine hundred and seventy-five, had brought 
off in triumph and placed here, turned with their mouths up¬ 
ward to serve as lamps, and remain shining mementoes of his 
victory. King Fernando ordered that these bells should be re¬ 
stored to the church of San Iago; and as Christians had been 
obliged to bring those bells hither on their shoulders, so in¬ 
fidels were compelled in like manner to carry them back. 
Great was the popular triumph when these bells had their 
tongues restored to them, and were once more enabled to fill 
the air with their holy clangor. 

Having ordered all things for the security and welfare of 
the city, the king placed it under the government of Don 
Tello Alonzo de Meneses; he appointed Don Alvar Perez de 
Castro, also, general of the frontier, having his stronghold in 
the castle of the rock of Martos. The king then returned, 
covered with glory, to Toledo. 

The fame of the recovery of the renowned city of Cordova, 
which for five hundred and twenty-two years had been in the 
power of the infidels, soon spread throughout the kingdom, 
and people came crowding from every part to inhabit it. The 
gates which lately had been thronged with steel-clad warriors 
were now besieged by peaceful wayfarers of all kinds, con¬ 
ducting trains of mules laden with their effect and all their 


* Cron. Gen. de Espafia, pt. 4. Bleda, lib. 4, c. 10. 



CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 81 

household wealth; and so great was the throng that in a little 
While there were not houses sufficient to receive them. 

King Fernando, having restored the bells to San Iago, had 
others suspended in the tower of the mosque, whence the 
muezzin had been accustomed to call the Moslems to their 
worship. “ When the pilgrims,” says Fray Antonio Agapida, 
“who repaired to Cordova, heard the holy sound of these 
bells chiming from the tower of the cathedral, their hearts 
leaped for joy, and they invoked blessings on the head of the 
pious King Fernando.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

MARRIAGE OF KING FERNANDO TO THE PRINCESS JUANA — 
FAMINE AT CORDOVA.—DON ALVAR PEREZ. 

When Queen Berenguela beheld King Fernando retu ning 
in triumph from the conquest of Cordova, her heart was -ifted 
up with transport, for there is nothing that more rejoices the 
heart of a mother than the true glory of her son. The queen, 
however, as has been abundantly shown, was a woman of 
great sagacity and forecast. She considered that upwards of 
two years had elapsed since the death of the Queen Beatrix, 
and that her son was living in widowhood. It is true he was 
of quiet temperament, and seemed sufficiently occupied by the 
cares of government and the wars for the faith; so that ap¬ 
parently he had no thought of further matrimony, but the 
shrewd mother considered likewise that he was in the prime 
and vigor of his days, renowned in arms, noble and command¬ 
ing in person, and gracious and captivating in manners, and 
surrounded by the temptations of a court. True, he was a 
saint in spirit, hut after all in flesh he was a man, and might 
be led away into those weaknesses very incident to, but highly 
unbecoming of, the exalted state of princes. The good mother 
was anxious, therefore, that he should enter again into the 
secure and holy state of wedlock. 

King Fernando, a mirror of obedience to his mother, readily 
concurred with her views in the present instance, and left it to 
her judgment and discretion to make a choice for him. The 
choice fell upon the Princess Juana, daughter of the Count of 



82 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Pothier, and a descendant of Louis the Seventh of France. 
The marriage was negotiated by Queen Berenguela with the 
Count of Pothier; and the conditions being satisfactorily 
arranged, the princess was conducted in due state to Burgos, 
where the nuptials were celebrated with great pomp and cere¬ 
mony. 

The king, as well as his subjects, was highly satisfied with 
the choice of the sage Berenguela, for the bride was young, 
beautiful, and of stately form, and conducted herself with 
admirable suavity and grace. 

After the rejoicings were over, King Fernando departed 
with his bride, and visited the principal cities and towns of 
Castile and Leon; receiving the homage of his subjects, and 
administering justice according to the primitive forms of 
those days, when sovereigns attended personally to the peti¬ 
tions and complaints of their subjects, and went about hearing 
causes and redressing grievances. 

In the course of his progress, hearing while at Toledo of a 
severe famine which prevailed at Cordova, he sent a large 
supply of money to that city, and at the same time issued 
orders to various parts to transport thither as much grain as 
possible. The calamity, however, went on increasing. The 
conquest of Cordova had drawn thither great multitudes, ex¬ 
pecting to thrive on the well-known fertility and abundance of 
the country. But the Moors, in the agitation of the time, had 
almost ceased to cultivate their fields; the troops helped to 
consume the supplies on hand; there were few hands to labor 
and an infinity of mouths to eat, and the cry of famine went 
on daily growing more intense. 

Upon this, Don Alvar Perez, who had command of the fron¬ 
tier, set off to represent the case in person to the king; for one 
living word from the mouth is more effective than a thousand 
dead words from the pen. He found the king at Valladolid, 
deeply immersed in the religious exercises of Holy Week, and 
much did it grieve this saintly monarch, say his chroniclers, to 
be obliged even for a moment to quit the holy quiet of the 
church for the worldly bustle of the palace, to lay by the saint 
and enact the sovereign. Having heard the representations of 
Don Alvar Perez, he forthwith gave him ample funds where¬ 
with to maintain his castles, his soldiers, and even the idlers 
who thronged about the frontier, and who would be useful 
subjects when the times should become settled. Satisfied, also, 
of the zeal and loyalty of Alvar Perez, which had been so 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


83 


strikingly displayed in the present instance, he appointed him 
adelantado of the whole frontier of Andalusia—an office equi¬ 
valent to that at present called viceroy. Don Alvar hastened 
hack to execute his mission and enter upon his new office. He 
took his station at Martos, in its rock-built castle, which was 
the key of all that frontier, whence he could carry relief to any 
point of his command, and could make occasional incursions 
into the territories. The following chapter will show the carea 
and anxieties which awaited him in his new command. 


CHAPTER X. 

ABEN ALHAMAR, FOUNDER OF THE ALHAMBRA.—FORTIFIES GRA¬ 
NADA AND MAKES IT HIS CAPITAL.—ATTEMPTS TO SURPRISE 
THE CASTLE OF MARTOS.—PERIL OF THE FORTRESS.—A WOMAN’S 
STRATAGEM TO SAVE IT.—DIEGO PEREZ, THE SMASHER.—DEATH 
OF COUNT ALVAR PEREZ DE CASTRO. 

On the death of Aben Hud, the Moorish power in Spain was 
br ken up into factions, as has already been mentioned; but 
these factions were soon united under one head, who threat¬ 
ened to be a formidable adversary to the Christians. This was 
Mohammed ben Alhamar, or Aben Alhamar, as he is common¬ 
ly called in history. He was a native of Arjona, of noble de¬ 
scent, being of the Beni Nasar, or race of Nasar, and had been 
educated in a manner befitting his rank. Arrived at manly 
years, he had been appointed alcayde of Arjona and Jaen, and 
had distinguished himself by the justice and benignity of his 
rule. He was intrepid, also, and ambitious, and during the 
late dissensions among the Moslems had extended his territo 
ries, making himself master of many strong places. 

On the death of Aben Hud, he made a military circuit 
through the Moorish territories, and was everywhere hailed 
with acclamations as the only one who could save the Moslem 
power in Spain from annihilation. At length he entered Gra¬ 
nada amidst the enthusiastic shouts of the populace. Here he 
was proclaimed king, and found himself at the head of the 
Moslems of Spain, being the first of his illustrious line that 
ever sat upon a throne. It needs nothing more to give lasting 
renown to Aben Alhamar than to say he was the foimder of the 



84 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


Alhambra, that magnificent monument which to this day 
bears testimony to Moorish taste and splendor. As yet, how¬ 
ever, Aben Alhamar had not time to indulge in the arts of 
peace. He saw the storm of war that threatened his newly 
founded kingdom, and prepared to buffet with it. The territo¬ 
ries of Granada extended along the coast from Algeziras almost 
to Murcia, and inland as far as Jaen and Huescar. All the 
frontiers he hastened to put in a state of defence, while he 
strongly fortified the city of Granada, which he made his 
capital. 

By the Mahometan law every citizen is a soldier, and to 
take arms in defence of the country and the faith is a religious 
and imperative duty. Aben Alhamar, however, knew the un¬ 
steadiness of hastily levied militia, and organized a standing 
force to garrison his forts and cities, the expense of which he 
defrayed from his own revenues. The Moslem warriors from 
all parts now rallied under his standard, and fifty thousand 
Moors, abandoning Valencia on the conquest of that country by 
the king of Aragon, hastened to put themselves under the do¬ 
minion of Aben Alhamar. 

Don Alvar Perez, on returning to his post, had intelligence 
Df all these circumstances, and perceived that he had not suffi¬ 
cient force to make head against such a formidable neighbor, 
and that in fact the whole frontier, so recently wrested from 
the Moors, was in danger of being reconquered. With his old 
maxim, therefore, ‘ ‘ There is more life in one word from the 
mouth than in a thousand words from the pen,” he deter¬ 
mined to have another interview with King Fernando, and 
acquaint him with the imminent dangers impending over the 
frontier. 

He accordingly took his departure with great secrecy, leav¬ 
ing his coimtess and her women and donzellas in his castle of 
the rock of Martos, guarded by his nephew Don Tello and forty 
chosen men. 

The departure of Don Alvar Perez was not so secret, how¬ 
ever, but that Aben Alhamar had notice of it by his spies, and 
hcyfesolved to make an attempt to surprise the castle of Mar¬ 
tos, which, as has been said, was the key to all this frontier. 

Don Tello, who had been left in command of the fortress, 
was a young galliard, full of the fire of youth, and he had sev¬ 
eral hardy and adventurous cavaliers with him, among whom 
was Diego Perez de Vargas, surnamed Machacha, or the 
Smasher, for his exploits at the battle of Xerez in smashing 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


85 


the heads of the Moors witn the limb of an olive-tree. These 
hot-blooded cavaliers, looking out like hawks from their 
mountain hold, were seized with an irresistible inclination to 
make a foray into the lands of their Moorish neighbors. On a 
bright morning they accordingly set forth, promising the don- 
zellas of the castle to bring them jewels and rich silks, the 
spoils of Moorish women. 

The cavaliers had not been long gone when the castle was 
alarmed by the sound of trumpets, and the watchman from 
the tower gave notice of a cloud of dust, with Moorish banners 
arid armor gleaming through it. It was, in fact, the Moorish 
king, Aben Alhamar, who pitched his, tents before the castle. 

Great was the consternation that reigned within the walls, 
for all the men were absent, excepting one or two necessary 
for the service of the castle. The dames and donzellas gave 
themselves up to despair, expecting to be carried away cap¬ 
tive, perhaps to supply some Moorish harem. The countess, 
however, was of an intrepid spirit and ready invention. Sum¬ 
moning her duenas and damsels, she made them arrange their 
hair, and dress themselves like men, take weapons in hand, 
and show themselves between the battlements. The Moorish 
king was deceived, and supposed the fort well garrisoned. He 
was deterred, therefore, from attempting to take it by storm. 
In the mean time she dispatched a messenger by the postern- 
gate, with orders to speed swiftly in quest of Don Tello, and 
tell him the peril of the fortress. 

At hearing these tidings, Don Tello and his companions 
turned their reins and spurred back for the castle, but on 
drawing nigh, they saw from a hill that it was invested by 
a numerous host who were battering the walls. It was an 
appalling sight—to cut their way through such a force seemed 
hopeless—yet their hearts were wrung with anguish when they 
thought of the countess and her helpless donzellas. Upon 
this, Diego Perez de Vargas, surnamed Machacha, stepped 
forward and proposed to form a forlorn hope, and attempt 
to force a passage to the castle. “If any of us succeed,” said 
he, ‘ ‘ we may save the countess and the rock; if we fall, we 
shall save our souls and act the parts of good cavaliers. This 
rock is the key of all the frontier, on which the king depends 
to get possession of the country. Shame would it be if Moors 
should capture it; above all, if they should lead away our 
honored countess and her ladies captive before our eyes, 
while our lances remain unstained by blood and we unscarred 


86 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


with a wound. For my part, 1 would rather die than see it. 
Life is but short; we should do in it our best. So, in a word, 
cavaliers, if you refuse to join me I will take my leave of you 
and do what I can with my single arm.” 

“ Diego Perez,” cried Don Tello, “ you have spoken my very 
wishes; I will stand by you until the death, and let those who 
are good cavaliers and hidalgos follow our example.” 

The other cavaliers caught fire at these words; forming a 
solid squadron, they put spurs to their horses, and rushed 
down upon the Moors. The first who broke into the ranks of 
the enemy was Diego Perez, the Smasher, and he opened a 
way for the others. Their only object was to cut their way 
to the fortress; so they fought and pressed forward. The 
most of them got to the rock; some were cut off by the Moors, 
and died like valiant knights, fighting to the last gasp. 

When the Moorish king saw the daring of these cavaliers, 
and that they had succeeded in reinforcing the garrison, he 
despaired of gaining the castle without much time, trouble, 
and loss of blood. He persuaded himself, therefore, that it 
was not worth the price, and, striking his tents, abandoned the 
siege. Thus the rock of Martos was saved by the sagacity of 
the countess and the prowess of Diego Perez de Vargas, sur- 
named the Smasher. 

In the mean time, Don Alvar Perez de Castro arrived in pres¬ 
ence of the king at Hutiel. King Fernando received him with 
benignity, but seemed to think his zeal beyond his prudence; 
leaving so important a frontier so weakly guarded, sinking the 
viceroy in the courier, and coming so far to give by word of 
mouth what might easily have been communicated by letter. 
He felt the value, however, of his loyalty and devotion, but, 
furnishing him with ample funds, requested him to lose no 
time in getting back to his post. The count set out on his 
return, but it is probable the ardor and excitement of his spirit 
proved fatal to him, for he was seized with a violent fever 
when on the journey, and died in the town of Orgaz. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


87 


CHAPTER XI. 

ABEN HUDIEL, THE MOORISH KING OF MURCIA, BECOMES THE 
VASSAL OF KING FERNANDO.—ABEN ALHAMAR SEEKS TO DRIVE 
THE CHRISTIANS OUT OF ANDALUSIA.—FERNANDO TAKES THE 
FIELD AGAINST HIM.—RAVAGES OF THE KING.—HIS LAST 
MEETING WITH THE QUEEN-MOTHER. 

The death of Count Alvar Perez de Castro caused deep afflic¬ 
tion to King Fernando, for he considered him the shield of the 
frontier. While he was at Cordova, or at his rock of Martos, 
the king felt as assured of the safety of the border as though 
he had been there himself. As soon as he could be spared from 
Castile and Leon, he hastened to Cordova, to supply the loss 
the frontier had sustained in the person of his vigilant lieuten¬ 
ant. One of his first measures was to effect a truce of one year 
with the king of Granada—a measure wliich each adopted with 
great regret, compelled by his several policy: King Fernando 
to organize and secure his recent conquests; Aben Alhamar to 
regulate and fortify his newly founded kingdom. Each felt 
that he had a powerful enemy to encounter and a desperate 
struggle before him. 

King Fernando remained at Cordova until the spring of the 
following year (1241), regulating the affairs of that noble city, 
assigning houses and estates to such of his cavaliers as had dis¬ 
tinguished themselves in the conquest, and, as usual, making 
rich donations of towns and great tracts of land to the Church 
and to different religious orders. Leaving his brother Alfonso 
with a sufficient force to keep an eye upon the king of Gra¬ 
nada and hold him in check, King Fernando departed for 
Castile, making a circuit by Jaen and Baeza and Andujar, and 
arriving in Toledo on the fourth of April. Here he received 
important propositions from Aben Hudiel, the Moorish king 
of Murcia. The death of Aben Hud had left that kingdom a 
scene of confusion. The alcaydes of the different cities and 
fortresses were at strife with each other, and many refused 
allegiance to Aben Hudiel. The latter, too, was in hostility 
with Aben Alhamar, the king of Granada, and he feared he 
would take advantage of his truce with King Fernando, and 
the distracted state of the kingdom of Murcia, to make an in- 


88 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


road. Thus desperately situated, Aben Hudiel had sent mis¬ 
sives to King Fernando, entreating his protection, and offering 
to become his vassal. 

The king of Castile gladly closed with this offer. He forth¬ 
with sent his son and heir, the Prince Alfonso, to receive the 
submission of the king of Murcia. As the prince was young 
and inexperienced in these affairs of state, he sent with him 
Don Pelayo de Correa, the Grand Master of Santiago, a cava¬ 
lier of consummate wisdom and address, and also Kodrigo 
Gonzalez Giron. The prince was received in Murcia with 
regal honors; the terms were soon adjusted by which the 
Moorish king acknowledged vassalage to King Fernando, and 
ceded to him one-half of his revenues, in return for which the 
king graciously took him under his protection. The alcaydes of 
Alicant, Elche, Oriola, and several other places, agreed to this 
covenant of vassalage, but it was indignantly spurned by the 
Wali of Lorca; he had been put in office by Aben Hud; and, 
now that potentate was no more, he aspired to exercise an 
independent sway, and had placed alcaydes of his own party 
in Mula and Carthagena. 

As the Prince Alfonso had come to solemnize the act of 
homage and vassalage proposed by the Moorish king, and not 
to extort submission from his subjects by force of arms, he 
contented himself with making a progress through the king¬ 
dom and receiving the homage of the acquiescent towns and 
cities, after which he rejoined his father in Castile. 

It is conceived by the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida, as well 
as by other monkish chroniclers, that this important acquisi¬ 
tion of territory by the saintly Fernando was a boon from 
Heaven in reward of an offering which he made to God of his 
daughter Berenguela, whom early in this year he dedicated as 
a nun in the convent of Las Huelgas, in Burgos—of which con¬ 
vent the king’s sister Constanza was abbess.* 

About this time it was that King Fernando gave an instance 
of his maganimity and his chivalrous disposition. We have 
seen the deadly opposition he had experienced from the 
haughty house of Lara, and the ruin which the three brothers 
brought upon themselves by their traitorous hostility. The 
anger of the king was appeased by their individual ruin; he did 
not desire to revenge himself upon their helpless families, nor 


* Cronica del Rey Santo, cap. 13. 





CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


89 


to break down and annihilate a house lofty and honored in the 
traditions of Spain. One of the brothers, Don Fernando, had 
left a daughter, Dona Sancha Fernandez de Lara; there hap 
pened at this time to be in Spain a cousin-german of the king, 
a prince of Portugal, Don Fernando by name, who held the 
senoria of Serpa. Between this prince and Doha Sancha the 
king effected a marriage, whence has sprung one of the most 
illustrious branches of the ancient house of Lara.* The other 
daughters of Don Fernando retained large possessions in Cas¬ 
tile ; and one of his sons will be found serving valiantly under 
the standard of the king. 

In the mean time the truce with Aben Alhamar, the king of 
G ranada, had greatly strengthened the hands of that monarch. 
He had received accessions of troops from various parts, had 
fortified his capital and his frontiers, and now fomented dis¬ 
turbances in the neighboring kingdom of Murcia—encouraging 
the refractory cities to persist in their refusal of vassalage— 
hoping to annex that kingdom to his own newly consolidated 
dominions. 

The Wali of Lorca and his partisans, the alcaydes of Mula 
and Carthagena, thus instigated by the King of G-ranada, now 
increased in turbulence, and completely overawed the feeble¬ 
handed Aben Hudiel. King Fernando thought this a good op¬ 
portunity to give his son and heir his first essay in arms. He 
accordingly dispatched the prince a second time to Murcia, ac¬ 
companied as before by Don Pelayo de Correa, the Grand Mas¬ 
ter of Santiago; but he sent him now with a strong military 
force, to play the part of a conqueror. The conquest, as may 
be supposed, was easy; Mula, Lorca, and Carthagena soon sub¬ 
mitted, and the whole kingdom was reduced to vassalage— 
Fernando henceforth adding to his other titles King of Murcia. 
“Thus,” says Fray Antonio Agapida, “was another precious 
jewel wrested from the kingdom of Antichrist, and added to 
the crown of this saintly monarch. ” 

But it was not in Murcia alone that King Fernando found 
himself called to contend with his new adversary the King of 
Granada. That able and active monarch, strengthened as has 
been said during the late truce, had made bold forays in the 
frontiers recently conquered by King Fernando, and had even 
extended them to the neighborhood of Cordova. In all this he 
had been encouraged by some degree of negligence and inac- 


* Notas para la Vida del Santo Rey, p. 554. 



90 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


tionon the part of King Fernando's brother Alfonso, who had 
been left in charge of the frontier. The prince took the field 
against Aben Alhamar, and fought him manfully; but the 
Moorish force was too powerful to be withstood, and the prince 
was defeated. 

Tidings of this was sent to King Fernando, and of the great 
danger of the frontier, as Aben Alhamar, flushed with success, 
was aiming to drive the Christians out of Andalusia. King 
Fernando immediately set off for the frontier, accompanied by 
the Queen Juana. He did not wait to levy a powerful force, 
but took with him a small number—knowing the loyalty of his 
subjects and their belligerent propensities, and that they would 
hasten to his standard the moment they knew he was in the 
field and exposed to danger. His force accordingly increased 
as he advanced. At Andujar he met his brother Alfonso with 
the relics of his lately defeated army—all brave and expert 
soldiers. He had now a commanding force, and leaving the. 
queen with a sufficient guard at Andujar, he set off with his 
brother Alfonso and Don Nuno Gonzalez de Lara, son of the 
Count Gonzalo, to scour the country about Arjona, Jaen, and 
Alcandete. The Moors took refuge in their strong places, 
whence they saw with aching hearts the desolation of their 
country—olive plantations on fire, vineyards laid waste, groves 
and orchards cut down, and all the other modes of ravage 
practised in these unsparing wars. 

The King of Granada did not venture to take the field; and 
King Fernando, meeting no enemy to contend with, while 
ravaging the lands of Alcandete, detached a part of his force 
under Don Rodrigo Fernandez de Castro, a son of the brave 
Alvar Perez lately deceased, and he associated with him Nufio 
Gonzalez, with orders to besiege Arjona. This was a place 
dear to Aben Alhamar, the King of Granada, being his native 
place, where he had first tasted the sweets of power. Hence he 
was commonly called the King of Arjona. 

The people of the place, though they had quailed before King 
Fernando, despised his officers and set them at defiance. The 
king himself, however, made his appearance on the following 
day with the remainder of his forces, whereupon Arjona ca¬ 
pitulated. 

While his troops were reposing from their fatigues, the king 
made some further ravages, and reduced several small towns 
to obedience. He then sent his brother Don Alf onso with suffi¬ 
cient forces to carry fire and sword into the Yega of Granada. 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


91 


In the mean time he returned to Andujar to the Queen Juana. 
He merely came, say the old chroniclers, for the purpose of 
conducting her to Cordova; fulfilling, always, his duty as a 
cavalier, without neglecting that of a king. 

The moment he had left her in her palace at Cordova, he 
hastened back to join his brother in harassing the territories 
of Granada. He came in time; for Aben Alhamar, enraged at 
seeing the destruction of the Vega, made such a vigorous sally, 
that had Prince Alfonso been alone in command, he might 
have received a second lesson still more disastrous than the 
first. The presence of the king, however, put new spirits and 
valor into the troops; the Moors were driven back to the city, 
and the Christians pursued them to the very gates. As the 
king had not sufficient forces with him to attempt the capture 
of this place, he contented himself with the mischief he had 
done, and, with some more which he subsequently effected, he 
returned to Cordova to let his troops rest from their fatigues. 

While the king was in this city, a messenger arrived from 
his mother, the Queen Berenguela, informing him of her inten¬ 
tion of coming to pay him a visit. A long time had elapsed 
since they had seen each other, and her extreme age rendered 
her anxious to embrace her son. The king, to prevent her 
from taking so long a journey, set off to meet her, taking with 
him his Queen Juana. The meeting took place in Pezuelo, 
near Burgos,* and was affecting on both sides, for never did 
son and mother love and honor each other more truly. In 
this interview, the queen represented her age and increasing 
weakness, and her incapacity to cope with the fatigues of pub¬ 
lic affairs, of which she had always shared the burden with 
the king; she therefore signified her wish to retire to her con¬ 
vent, to pass the remnant of her days in holy repose. King 
Fernando, who had ever found in his mother his ablest coun¬ 
sellor and’ best support, entreated her not to leave his side in 
these arduous times, when the King of Granada on one side, 
and the King of Seville on the other, threatened to put all his 
courage and resources to the trial. A long and earnest, yet 
tender and affectionate, conversation succeeded between them, 
which resulted in the queen-mother’s yielding to his solicita¬ 
tions. The illustrious son and mother remained together six 
weeks, enjoying each other’s society, after which they sepa- 


* Some chroniclers, through mistake, make it Pezuelo, near Ciudad Real, in the 
mountains on the confines of Granada. 





92 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


rated—the king and queen for the frontier, and the queen- 
mother for Toledo. They were never to behold each other 
again upon earth, for the king never returned to Castile. 


CHAPTER XII. 

KING FERNANDO’S EXPEDITION TO ANDALUSIA.—SIEGE OF JAEN. 

—SECRET DEPARTURE OF ABEN ALHAMAR FOR THE CHRISTIAN 

CAMP.—HE ACKNOWLEDGES HIMSELF THE VASSAL OF THE 

KING, WHO ENTERS JAEN IN TRIUMPH. 

It was in the middle of August, 1245, that King Fernando 
set out on his grand expedition to Andalusia, whence he was 
never to return. All that autumn he pursued the same de¬ 
structive course as in his preceding campaigns, laying waste 
the country with fire and sword in the vicinity of Jaen and to 
Alcala la Real. The town, too, of Iliora, built on a lofty rock 
and fancying itself secure, was captured and given a prey to 
flames, which was as a bale-fire to the country. Thence he 
descended into the beautiful Vega of Granada, ravaging that 
earthly paradise. Aben Alhamar sallied forth from Granada 
with what forces he could collect, and a bloody battle ensued 
about twelve miles from Granada. A part of the troops of 
Aben Alhamar were hasty levies, inhabitants of the city, and 
but little accustomed to combat; they lost courage, gave way, 
and threw the better part of the troops in disorder; a retreat 
took place, which ended in a headlong flight, in which there 
was great carnage.* 

Content for the present with the ravage lie had made, and 
the victory he had gained, King Fernando now drew off his 
troops and repaired to his frontier hold of Martos, where they 
might rest after their fatigues in security. 

Here he was joined by Don Pelayo Perez Correa, the Grand 
Master of Santiago. This valiant cavalier, who was as sage 
and shrewd in council as he was adroit and daring in the field, 
had aided the youthful Prince Alfonso in completing the tran- 
quillization of Murcia, and, leaving him in the quiet adminis¬ 
tration of affairs in that kingdom, had since been on a pious 


* Conde, tom. iii. c. 5. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 93 

and political mission to the court of Rome. He arrived most 
opportunely at Martos, to aid the king with his counsels, for 
there was none in whose wisdom and loyalty the king had 
more confidence. 

The grand master listened to all the plans of the king for the 
humiliation of the haughty King of Granada; he then gravely 
but most respectfully objected to the course the king was pur¬ 
suing. He held the mere ravaging the country of little ulti¬ 
mate benefit. It harassed and irritated, but did not destroy 
the enemy, while it fatigued and demoralized the army. To 
conquer the country, they must not lay waste the field, but 
take the towns; so long as the Moors "retained their strong¬ 
holds, so long had they dominion over the land. He advised, 
therefore, as a signal blow to the power of the Moorish king, 
the capture of the city of Jaen. This was a city of immense 
strength, the bulwark of the kingdom; it was well supplied 
with provisions and the munitions of war; strongly garrisoned 
and commanded by Abu Omar, native of Cordova, a general 
of cavalry, and one of the bravest officers of Aben Alhamar. 
King Fernando had already besieged it in vain, but the reason¬ 
ing of the grand master had either convinced his reason or 
touched his pride. He set himself down before the walls of 
Jaen, declaring he would never raise the siege until he was 
master of the place. For a long time the siege was carried on 
in the depth of winter, in defiance of rain and tempests. Aben 
Alhamar was in despair: he kould not relieve the place; he 
could not again venture on a battle with the‘king after his late 
defeat. He saw that Jaen must fall, and feared it would be 
followed by the fall of Granada. He was a man of ardent 
spirit and quick and generous impulses. Taking a sudden 
resolution, he departed secretly for the Christian camp, and 
made his way to the presence of King Fernando. “Behold 
before you,” said he, “the King of Granada. Resistance I 
find unavailing; I come, trusting to your magnanimity and 
good faith, to put myself under your protection and acknow¬ 
ledge myself your vassal.” So saying, he knelt and kissed the 
king’s hand in token of homage. 

“King Fernando,” say the old chroniclers, “was not to be 
outdone in generosity. He raised his late enemy from the 
earth, embraced him as a friend, and left him in the sovereignty 
of his dominions; the good king, however, was as politic as he 
was generous. He received Aben Alhamar as a vassal; con¬ 
ditioned for the delivery of Jaen into his hands; for the yearly 


94 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


payment of one-half of his revenues; for his attendance at the 
cortes as one of the nobles of the empire, and his aiding Castile 
in war with a certain number of horsemen.” 

In compliance with these conditions, Jaen was given up to 
the Christian king, who entered it in triumph about the end of 
February.* His first care was to repair in grand procession, 
bearing the holy cross, to the principal mosque, which was 
purified and sanctified by the Bishop of Cordova, and erected 
into a cathedral and dedicated to the most holy Virgin Mary. 

He remained some time in Jaen, giving repose to his troops, 
regulating the affairs of this important place, disposing of 
houses and estates among his warriors who had most dis¬ 
tinguished themselves, and amply rewarding the priests and 
monks who had aided him with their prayers. 

As to Aben Alhamar, he returned to Granada, relieved from 
apprehension of impending ruin to his kingdom, but deeply 
humiliated at having to come under the yoke of vassalage. 
He consoled himself by prosecuting the arts of peace, improv¬ 
ing the condition of his people, building hospitals, founding 
institutions of learning, and beautifying his capital with those 
magnificent edifices which remain the admiration of posterity; 
for now it was that he commenced to build the Alhambra. 

Note. —There is some dispute among historians as to the duration of the siege 
and the date of the surrender of Jaen. Some make the siege endure eight months, 
from August into the middle of April. The authentic Agapida adopts the opinion 
of the author of Notas para la Vida del Sanlo Rey , etc., who makes the siege begin 
on the 31st December and end about the 26th February. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

AXATAF, KING OF SEVILLE, EXASPERATED AT THE SUBMISSION OF 
THE KING OF GRANADA, REJECTS THE PROPOSITIONS OF KING 
FERDINAND FOR A TRUCE. —THE LATTER IS ENCOURAGED BY A 
VISION TO UNDERTAKE THE CONQUEST OF THE CITY OF SE¬ 
VILLE.—DEATH OF QUEEN BERENGUELA. —A DIPLOMATIC MAR¬ 
RIAGE. 

King Fernando, having reduced the fair kingdom of Gra¬ 
nada to vassalage, and fortified himself in Andalusia by the 
possession of the strong city of Jaen, bethought him now of 


Notas para la Vida del Santo Rey, p. 562. 






GHU0N1CLE ( J FERNANDO THE SUNT. 


95 


returning to Castile. There was but one Moorish potentate in 
Spain whose hostilities he had to fear: this was Axataf, the 
King of Seville. He was the son of Aben Hud, and succeeded 
to a portion of his territories. Warned by the signal defeat of 
his father at Xerez, he had forborne to take tho field against 
the Christians, but had spared no pains and expense to put the 
city of Seville in the highest state of defence; strengthening 
its walls and towers, providing it with munitions of war of all 
kinds, and exercising his people continually in the use of arms. 
King Fernando was loth to leave this great frontier in its 
present unsettled state, with such a powerful enemy in the 
neighborhood, who might take advantage of nis absence to 
break into open hostility; still it was his policy to let the sword 
rest in the sheath until he had completely secured his new pos¬ 
sessions. He sought, therefore, to make a truce with King 
Axataf, and, to enforce his propositions, it is said he appeared 
with his army before Seville in May, 1246.* His propositions 
were rejected, as it were, at the very gate. It appears that 
the King of Seville was exasperated rather than dismayed by 
the submission of the King of Granada. He felt that on him¬ 
self depended the last hope of Islamism in Spain; he trusted 
on aid from the coast of Barbary, with which his capital had 
ready communication by water; and he resolved to make a 
bold stand in the cause of his faith. 

King Fernando retired indignant from before Seville, and 
repaired to Cordova, with the pious determination to punish 
the obstinacy and humble the pride of the infidel, by planting 
the standard of the cross on the walls of his capital. Seville 
once in his power, the rest of Andalusia would soon follow, 
and then his triumph over the sect of Mahomet would be 
complete. Other reasons may have concurred to make him 
covet the conquest of Seville. It was a city of great splendor 
and wealth, situated in the midst of a fertile country, in a 
genial climate, under a benignant sky; and having by its river 
the Guadalquivir, an open highway for commerce, it was the 
metropolis of all Morisma—a world of wealth and delight 
within itself. 

These were sufficient reasons for aiming at the conquest of 
this famous city, but these were not sufficient to satisfy the 
holy friars who have written the history of this monarch, and 
who have found a reason more befitting his character of saint. 


* Notas para la Vida del Santo Rey, p. 572. 




MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


96 

Accordingly we are told, by the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida, 
that at a time when the king was in deep affliction for the 
death of his mother, the Queen Berenguela, and was praying 
with great fervor, there appeared before him Saint Isidro, the 
great Apostle of Spain, who had been Archbishop of Seville in 
old times, before the perdition of Spain by the Moors. As the 
monarch gazed in reverend wonder at the vision, the saint laid 
on him a solemn injunction to rescue from the empire of Ma¬ 
homet his city of Seville. “ Que asi la llamo por suya en la 
patria, suya en la silla, y suya en la protection.” “Such,” 
says Agapida, “was the true reason why this pious king un¬ 
dertook the conquest of Seville;” and *in this assertion he is 
supported by many Spanish chroniclers; and by the traditions 
of the Church—the vision of San Isidro being read to this 
day among its services.* 

The death of Queen Berenguela, to which we have just ad¬ 
verted, happened some months after the conquest of Jaen and 
submission of Granada. The grief of the king on hearing the 
tidings, we are told, was past description. For a time it quite 
overwhelmed him. “ Nor is it much to be marvelled at,” says 
an old chronicler; “for never did monarch lose a mother so 
noble and magnanimous in all her actions. She was indeed ac¬ 
complished in all things, an example of every virtue, the mirror 
of Castile and Leon and all Spain, by whose counsel and wisdom 
the affairs of many kingdoms were governed. This noble 
queen,” continues the chronicler, “was deplored in all the 
cities, towns, and villages cf Castile and Leon; by all people, 
great and small, but especially by poor cavaliers , to whom she 
was ever a benefactress.”! 

Another heavy loss to King Fernando, about this time, was 
that of the Archbishop of Toledo, Don Rodrigo, the great ad¬ 
viser of the king in all his expeditions, and the prelate who 
first preached the grand crusade in Spain. He lived a life of 
piety, activity, and zeal, and died full of years, of honors, and 
of riches—having received princely estates and vast revenues 
from the king in reward of his services in the cause. 

These private afflictions for a time occupied the royal mind; 
the king was also a little disturbed by some rasn proceedings of 
his son, the hereditary Prince Alfonso, who, being left in the 
government of Murcia, took a notion ot imitating his father 


* Rodriguez, Memorias del Santo Key. c. Iviii. 
t Cronicadel Rey Don Fernando, e. xin. 





CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


97 


in his conquests, and made an inroad into the Moorish king¬ 
dom of Valencia, at that time in a state of confusion. This 
brought on a collision with King Jayme of Aragon, surnamed 
the Conqueror, who had laid his hand upon all Valencia, as 
his by right of arms. There was thus danger of a rupture 
with Aragon, and of King Fernando having an enemy on his 
back, while busied in his wars in Andalusia. Fortunately 
King Jayme had a fair daughter, the Princess Violante; and 
the grave diplomatists of the two courts determined that it 
were better the two children should marry, than the two 
fathers should fight. To this arrangement King Fernando 
and King Jayme gladly assented. They were both of the 
same faith; both proud of the name of Christian; both zealous 
in driving Mahometanism out of Spain, and in augmenting 
their empires with its spoils. The marriage was accordingly 
solemnized in Valladolid in the month of November in this 
same year; and now the saintly King Fernando turned his 
whole energies to this great and crowning achievement, the 
conquest of Seville, the emporium of Mahometanism in Spain. 

Foreseeing, as long as the mouth of the Guadalquivir was 
open, the city could receive reinforcements and supplies from 
Africa, the king held consultations with a wealthy man of 
Burgos, Ramon Bonifaz, or Boniface, by name—some say a 
native of France—one well experienced in maritime affairs, 
and capable of fitting out and managing a fleet. This man he 
constituted his admiral, and sent him to Biscay to provide and 
arm a fleet of ships and galleys, with which to attack Seville 
by water, while the king should invest it by land. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

INVESTMENT OF SEVILLE.—ALL SPAIN AROUSED TO ARMS.—SUR¬ 
RENDER OF ALCALA DEL RIO.—THE FLEET OF ADMIRAL RAMON 
BONIFAZ ADVANCES UP THE QUADALQUIVIR.—DON PELAYO 
CORREA, MASTER OF SANTIAGO.—HIS VALOROUS DEEDS AND 
THE MIRACLES WROUGHT IN HIS BEHALF. 

When it was bruited about that King Fernando the Saint 
intended to besiege the great city of Seville, all Spain was 
roused to arms. The masters of the various military and 



98 


MOORISH CHRONICLES 


religious orders, the ricos nombres, the princes, cavaliers, 
hidalgos, and every one of Castile and Leon capable of bearing 
arms, prepared to take the field. Many of the nobility of 
Catalonia and Portugal repaired to the standard of the king, 
as did other cavaliers of worth and prowess from lands far 
beyond the Pyrenees. 

Prelates, priests, and monks likewise thronged to the army 
—some to take care of the souls of those who hazarded their 
lives in this holy enterprise, others with a zealous determina¬ 
tion to grasp buckler and lance, and battle with the arm of 
flesh against the enemies of God and the Church. 

At the opening of spring the assembled host issued forth in 
shining array from the gates of Cordova. After having gained 
possession of Carmona, and Lora, and Alcolea, and of other 
neighboring places—some by voluntary surrender, others by 
force of arms—the king crossed the Guadalquivir, with great 
difficulty and peril, and made himself master of several of the 
most important posts in the neighborhood of Seville. Among 
these was Alcala del Rio, a place of great consequence, through 
which passed all the succors from the mountains to the city. 
This place was bravely defended by Axataf in person, the 
commander of Seville. He remained in Alcala with three 
hundred Moorish cavaliers, making frequent sallies upon the 
Christians, and effecting great slaughter. At length he beheld 
all the country around laid waste, the grain burnt or trampled 
down, the vineyards torn up, the cattle driven away and the 
villages consumed; so that nothing remained to give suste¬ 
nance to the garrison or the inhabitants. Not daring to linger 
there any longer, he departed secretly in the night and retired 
to Seville, and the town surrendered to King Fernando. 

While the king was putting Alcala del Rio in a state of de¬ 
fence, Admiral Ramon Bomfaz arrived at the mouth of the 
Guadalquivir with a fleet of thirteen large ships, and several 
small vessels and galleys. While he was yet hovering about 
the land, he heard of the approach of a great force of ships 
for Tangier, Ceuta, and Seville, and of an army to assail him 
from the shores. In this peril he sent in all speed for succor 
to the king; when it reached the sea-coast the enemy had not 
yet appeared; wherefore, thinking it a false alarm, the rein¬ 
forcement returned to the camp. Scarcely, however, had it 
departed when the Africans came swarming over the sea, and 
fell upon Ramon Bonifaz with a greatly superior force. The 
admiral, in no way dismayed, defended himself vigorously-- 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


sunk several of the enemy, took a few prizes, and put the 
rest to flight, remaining master of the river. The king had 
heard of the peril of the fleet, and, crossing the ford of the 
river, had hastened to its aid; hut when he came to the sea- 
coast, he found it victorious, at which he was greatly re¬ 
joiced, and commanded that it should advance higher up the 
river. 

It was on the twentieth of the month of August that King 
Fernando began formally the siege of Seville, having en¬ 
camped his troops, small in number, but of stout hearts and 
valiant hands, near to the city on the banks of the river. From 
hence Don Pelayo Correa, the valiant Master of Santiago, 
with two hundred and sixty horsemen, many of whom were 
warlike friars, attempted to cross the river at the ford below 
Aznal Farache. Upon this, Aben Amaken, Moorish king of 
Niebla, sallied forth with a great host to defend the pass, and 
the cavaliers were exposed to imminent peril, until the king 
sent one hundred cavaliers to their aid, led on by Eodrigo 
Flores and Alonzo Tellez and Fernan Diaiiez. 

Thus reinforced, the Master of Santiago scoured the opposite 
side of the river, and with his little army of scarce four hun¬ 
dred horsemen, mingled monks and soldiers, spread dismay 
throughout the country. They attacked the town of Gelbes, 
and, after a desperate combat, entered it, sword in hand, slay¬ 
ing or capturing the Moors, and making rich booty. They 
made repeated assaults upon the castle of Triana, and had 
bloody combats with its garrison, but could not take the place. 
This hardy band of cavaliers had pitched their tents and formed 
their little camp on the banks of the river, below the castle of 
Aznal Farache. This fortress was situated on an eminence 
above the river, and its massive ruins, remaining at the pres¬ 
ent day, attest its formidable strength. 

When the Moors from the castle towers looked down upon 
this little camp of Christian cavaliers, and saw them sallying 
forth and careering about the country, and returning in the 
evenings with cavalcades of sheep and cattle, and mules laden 
with spoil, and long trains of captives, they were exceedingly 
wroth, and they kept a watch upon them, and sallied forth 
every day to fight with them, and to intercept stragglers from 
their camp, and to carry off their horses. Then the cavaliers 
concerted together, and they lay in ambush one day in the 
road by which the Moors were accustomed to sally forth, and 
when the Moors had partly passed their ambush, they rushed 


100 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


forth and fell upon them, and killed and captured above three 
hundred, and pursued the remainder to the very gates of the 
castle. From that time the Moors were so disheartened that 
they made no further sallies. 

Shortly after, the Master of Santiago receiving secret intelli 
gence that a Moorish sea-captain had passed from Seville to 
Triana, on his way to succor the castle of Aznal Farache, 
placed himself, with a number of chosen cavaliers, in ambus¬ 
cade at a pass by which the Moors were expected to come. 
After waiting a long time, their scouts brought word that the 
Moors had taken another road, and were nearly at the foot of 
the hill on which stood the castle. “ Cavaliers,” cried the mas¬ 
ter, “ it is not too late; let us first use our spurs and then our 
weapons, and if our steeds prove good, the day will yet be 
ours.” So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and the rest fol¬ 
lowing his example, they soon came in sight of the Moors. 
The latter, seeing the Christians coming after them full speed, 
urged their horses up the hill toward the castle, but the Chris¬ 
tians overtook them and slew seven of those in the rear. In 
the skirmish, Garci Perez struck the Moorish captain from his 
horse with a blow of his lance. The Christians rushed forward 
to take him prisoner. On seeing this, the Moors turned back, 
threw themselves between their commander and his assailants, 
and kept the latter in check while he was conveyed into the 
castle. Several of them fell covered with wounds; the residue, 
seeing their chieftain safe, turned their reins and galloped for 
the castle, just entering in time to have the gates closed upon 
their pursuers. 

Time and space permit not to recount the many other valor¬ 
ous deeds of Don Pelayo Correa, the good Master of Santiago, 
and his band of cavaliers and monks. His little camp became 
a terror to the neighborhood, and checked the sallies of the 
Moorish mountaineers from the Sierra Morena. In one of his 
enterprises he gained a signal advantage over the foe, but the 
approach of night threatened to defraud him of his victory. 
Then the pious warrior lifted up his voice and supplicated the 
Virgin Mary in those celebrated words, “Santa Maria deten 
tu dia” (Holy Mary, detain thy day), for it was one of the days 
consecrated to the Virgin. The blessed Virgin listened to the 
prayer of her valiant votary; the daylight continued in a su¬ 
pernatural manner, until the victory of the good Master of 
Santiago was completed. In honor of this signal favor, he 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 1<T 

afterward erected a temple to the Virgin by the name of Nueis* 
tra Senora de Tentudia.* 

If any one should dorbt this miracle, wrought in favor of 
this pious warrior and his soldiers of the cowl, it may be suf¬ 
ficient to relate another, which immediately succeeded, and 
which shows how peculiarly he was under the favor of Hea¬ 
ven. After the battle was over, his followers were ready to 
faint with thirst, and could find no stream or fountain; and 
when the good master saw the distress of his soldiers, his heart 
was touched with compassion, and, bethinking himself of the 
miracle performed by Moses, in an impulse of holy zeal and 
confidence, and in the name of the blessed Virgin, he struck 
a dry and barren rock with his lance, and instantly there 
gushed forth a fountain of water, at which all his Christian 
soldiery drank and were refreshed.! So much at present for 
the good Master of Santiago, Don Pelayo Correa. 


CHAPTER XV. 

KING FERNANDO CHANGES HIS CAMP.—GARCI PEREZ AND THE 
SEVEN MOORS. 

King Fernando the Saint soon found his encampment on 
the banks of the Guadalquivir too much exposed to the sudden 
sallies and assaults of the Moors. As the land was level, they 
easily scoured the fields, carried off horses and stragglers from 
the camp, and kept it in continual alarm. He drew off, there¬ 
fore, to a securer place, called Tablada, the same where at 
present is situated the hermitage of Nuestra Senora de el 
Balme. Here he had a profound ditch digged all round the 
camp, to shut up the passes from the Moorish cavalry. He 
appointed patrols of horsemen also, completely armed, who 
continually made the rounds of the camp, in successive bands, 
at all hours of the day and night. J In a little while his army 
was increased by the arrival of troops from all parts—nobles, 


* Zuniga: Annales de Sevilla, L. 1. 

t Jacob Paranes: Lib. de los Maestros de St. Iago. Cronica Gotica, T. 3, § xiiL 
Zuniga: Annales de Sevilla. 

X Cronica Gotica, T. 3, § viii. | 





102 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


cavaliei •*, ***,«, icli men, with their retainers—nor were the 
wanting holy prelates, who assumed the warrior, and brought 
large squadrons of well-armed vassals to the army. Merchants 
and artificers now daily arrived, and wandering minstrels, 
and people of all sorts, and the camp appeared like a warlike 
city, where rich and sumptuous merchandise was mingled 
with the splendor of arms; and the various colors of the tents 
and pavilions, and the fluttering standards and pennons bear¬ 
ing the painted devices of the proudest houses of Spain, were 
gay and glorious to behold. 

When the king had established the camp in Tablada he or¬ 
dered that every day the foragers should sally forth in search 
of provisions and provender, guarded by strong bodies of 
troops. The various chiefs of the army took turns to com¬ 
mand the guard who escorted the foragers. One day it was 
the turn of Garci Perez, the same cavalier who had killed the 
king of the Azules. He was a hardy, iron warrior, seasoned and 
scarred in warfare, and renowned among both Moors and Chris¬ 
tians for his great prowess, his daring courage, and his coolness 
in the midst of danger. Garci Perez had fingered in the camp 
until some time after the foragers had departed, who were 
already out of sight. He at length set out to join them, ac¬ 
companied by another cavalier. They had not proceeded far 
before they perceived seven Moorish genetes, or light-horse¬ 
men, directly in their road. When the companion of Garci 
Perez beheld such a formidable array of foes, he paused and 
said: “ Senor Perez, let us return; the Moors are seven and we 
are but two, and there is no law in the duello which obliges us 
to make front against such fearful odds.” 

To this Garci Perez replied: “Senor, forward, always for¬ 
ward; let us continue on our road; those Moors will never 
wait for us.” The other cavalier, however, exclaimed against 
such rashness, and turning the reins of his horse, returned as 
privately as possible to the camp, and hastened to his tent. 

' All this happened within sight of the camp. The king was 
at the door of his royal tent, which stood on a rising ground 
and overlooked the place where this occurred. When the king 
saw one cavalier return and the other continue, notwithstand¬ 
ing that there were seven Moors in the road, he ordered that 
some horsemen should ride forth to his aid. 

Upon this Don Lorenzo Xuarez, who was with the king and 
had seen Garci Perez sally forth from the camp, said: “ Your 
majesty may leave that cavalier to himself; that is Garci 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


103 


Peres, and he has no need of aid against seven Moors. If the 
Moors know him they will not meddle with him; and if they 
do, your majesty will see what kind of a cavalier he is.” 

They continued to watch the cavalier, who rode on tran¬ 
quilly as if in no apprehension. When he drew nigh to the 
Moors, who were drawn up on each side of the road, he took 
his arms from his squire and ordered him not to separate from 
him. As he was lacing his morion , an embroidered cap which 
he wore on his head fell to the ground without his perceiving 
it. Having laced the capellina, he continued on his way, and 
his squire after him. When the Moors saw him near by they 
knew by his arms that it was Garci/Perez, and bethinking 
them of his great renown for terrible deeds in arms, they did 
not dare to attack him, but went along the road even with 
him, he on one side, they on the other, making menaces. 

Garci Perez went on his road with great serenity, without 
making any movement. When the Moors saw that he heeded 
not their menaces, they turned round and went back to about 
the place where he dropped his cap. 

Having arrived at some distance from the Moors, he took off 
his arms to return them to his squire, and unlacing the capeh 
lina, found that the cap was wanting. He asked the squire 
for it, but the latter knew nothing about it. Seeing that it 
had fallen, he again demanded his arms of the squire and re¬ 
turned in search of it, telling his squire to keep close behind 
him and look out well for it. The squire remonstrated. 
“ What, senor,” said he, “will you return and place yourself 
in such great peril for a mere capa? Have you not already 
done enough for your honor, in passing so daringly by seven 
Moors, and have you not been singularly favored by fortune 
in escaping unhurt, and do you seek again to tempt fortune 
for a cap?” 

“Say no more,” replied Garci Perez; “ that cap was worked 
for me by a fair lady; I hold it of great value. Besides, dost 
thou not see that I have not a head to be without a cap?” allud¬ 
ing to the baldness of his head, which had no hair m front. 
So saying, he tranquilly returned toward the Moors. When 
Don Lorenzo Xuarez saw this, he said to the king: “ Behold! 
your majesty, how Garci Perez turns upon the Moors; since 
they will not make an attack, he means to attack them. Now 
your majesty will see the noble valor of this cavalier, if the 
Moors dare to await him.” When the Moors beheld Garci 
Perez approaching they thought he meant to assault them, 


104 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


and drew off, not daring to ^counter him. When Don Lo¬ 
renzo saw this he exclaimed: 

“Behold! your majesty, the truth of what I told you. 
These Moors dare not wait for him. I knew well the valor of 
Garci Perez, and it appears the Moors are aware of it like¬ 
wise.” 

In the mean time Garci Perez came to the place where the 
capa had fallen, and beheld it upon the earth. Then he ordered 
his squire to dismount and pick it up, and putting it deliber- 
erately on his head, he continued on his way to the foragers. 

When he returned to the camp from guarding the foragers, 
Don Lorenzo asked him, in presence of the king, who was 
the cavalier who had set out with him from the camp, but had 
turned back on sight of the Moors; he replied that he did not 
know him, and he was confused, for he perceived that the 
king had witnessed what had passed, and he was so modest 
withal, that he was ever embarrassed when his deeds were 
praised in his presence. 

Don Lorenzo repeatedly asked him who was the recreant 
cavalier, but he always replied that he did not know, although 
he knew full well and saw him daily in the camp. But he was 
too generous to say anything that should take away the fame 
of another, and he charged his squire that never, by word or 
look, he should betray the secret; so that, though inquiries 
were often made, the name of that cavalier was never dis¬ 
covered. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

OF THE RAFT BUILT BY THE MOORS, AND HOW IT WAS BOARDED 

BY ADMIRAL BONIFAZ.—DESTRUCTION OF THE MOORISH FLEET. 

—SUCCOR FROM AFRICA. 

W hile the army of King Fernando the Saint harassed the 
city by land and cut off its supplies, the bold Bonifaz, with his 
fleet, shut up the river, prevented all succor from Africa, and 
menaced to attack the bridge between Triana and Seville, by 
which the city derived its sustenance from the opposite coun¬ 
try. The Moors saw their peril. If this pass were destroyed, 
famine must be the consequence, and the multitude of their 



CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 105 


soldiers, on which at present they relied for safety, would then 
become the cause of their destruction. 

So the Moors devised a machine by which they hoped to 
sweep the river and involve tne invading fleet in ruin. They 
made a raft so wide that it reached from one bank to the other, 
and they placed all around it pots and vessels filled with resin, 
pitch, tar, and other combustibles, forming what is called 
Greek fire, and upon it was a great number of armed men; and 
on each shore—from the castle of Triana on the one side, and 
from the city on the other—sallied forth legions of troops, to 
advance at the same time with the raft. The raft was preceded 
by several vessels well armed, to attack the Christian ships, 
while the soldiers on the raft should hurl on board their pots of 
fire; and at length, setting all the combustibles in a blaze, 
should send the raft flaming into the midst of the hostile fleet, 
and wrap it in one general conflagration. 

When everything was prepared, the Moors set off by land 
and water, confident of success. But they proceeded in a wild, 
irregular manner, shouting and sounding drums and trumpets, 
and began to attack the Christian ships fiercely, but without 
concert, hurling their pots of fire from a distance, filling the air 
with smoke, but falling short of their enemy. The tumultuous 
uproar of their preparations had put all the Christians on their 
guard. The bold Bonifaz waited not to be assailed; he boarded 
the raft, attacked vigorously its defenders, put many of them 
to the sword, and drove the rest into the water, and succeeded 
in extinguishing the Greek fire. He then encountered the ships 
of war, grappling them and fighting hand to hand from ship to 
ship. The action was furious and bloody, and lasted all the 
day. Many were cut down in flight, many fell into the water, 
and many in despair threw themselves in and were drowned. 

The battle had raged no less fiercely upon the land. On the 
side of Seville, the troops had issued from the camp of King 
Fernando, while on the opposite shore the brave Master of San¬ 
tiago, Don Pelayo Perez Correa, with his warriors and fighting 
friars, had made sharp work with the enemy. In this way a 
triple battle was carried on; there was the rush of squadrons, 
the clash of arms, and the din of drums and trumpets on either 
bank, while the river was covered with vessels, tearing each 
other to pieces as it were, their crews fighting in the midst of 
flames and smoke, the waves red with blood and filled with the 
bodies of the slain. At length the Christians were victorious; 
most of the enemy’s vessels were taken or destroyed, and on 


106 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


either shore the Moors, broken and discomfited, fled—those on 
the one side for the gates of Seville, and those on the other for 
the castle of Triana—pursued with great slaughter by the 
victors. 

Notwithstanding the great destruction of them fleet, the 
Moors soon renewed their attempts upon the ships of Ramon 
Bonifaz, for they knew that the salvation of the city required 
the freedom of the river. Succor arrived from Africa, of ships, 
with troops and provisions; they rebuilt the fire-ships which 
had been destroyed, and incessant combats, feints, and. strata¬ 
gems took place daily, both on land and water. The admiral 
stood in great dread of the Greek fire used by the Moors. He 
caused large stakes of wood to be placed in the river, to pre¬ 
vent the passage of the fire-ships. This for some time was of 
avail; but the Moors, watching an opportunity when the senti¬ 
nels were asleep, came and threw cables round the stakes, and 
fastening the other ends to their vessels, made all sail, and, by 
the help of wind and oars, tore away the stakes and carried 
them off with shouts of triumph. The clamorous exultation of 
the Moors betrayed them. The Admiral Bonifaz was aroused. 
With a few of the lightest of his vessels he immediately pur¬ 
sued the enemy. He came upon them so suddenly that they 
were too much bewildered either to fight or fly. Some threw 
themselves into the waves in affright; others attempted to 
make resistance and were cut down. The admiral took four 
barks laden with arms and provisions, and with these returned 
in triumph to his fleet.* 


CHARTER XVII. 

OF THE STOUT PRIOR, FERRAN RUYZ, AND HOW HE RESCUED HIS 
CATTLE FROM THE MOORS.—FURTHER ENTERPRISES OF THE 
PRIOR, AND OF THE AMBUSCADE INTO WHICH HE FELL. 

It happened one day that a great part of the cavaliers of the 
army were absent, some making cavalgadas about the country, 
others guarding the foragers, and others gone to receive the 
Prince Alfonso, who was on his way to the camp from Murcia. 


* Cronica Gotica, L. 3, § 13. Cronica General, pt. 4. Cronica de Santo Re.y, c. 55. 






CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO fl/E SAIN'/'. 


JOT 


At this time ten Moorish cavaliers, of the brave lineage of the 
Azules, finding the Christian camp but thinly peopled, came 
prowling about, seeking where they might make a bold inroad. 
As they were on the lookout they came to that part of the 
camp where were the tents of the stout Friar Ferran Kuyz, 
prior of the hospital. The stout prior, and his fighting breth¬ 
ren, were as good at foraging as fighting. Around their quar¬ 
ters there were several sleek cows grazing, which they had 
carried off from the Moors. When the Azules saw these, they 
thought to make a good prize, and to bear off the prior’s cattle 
as a trophy. Careering lightly round, therefore, between the 
cattle and the camp, they began to drive them toward the city. 
The alarm was given in the camp, and six sturdy friars sallied 
forth, on foot, with two cavaliers, in pursuit of the marauders. 
The prior himself was roused by the noise; when he heard that 
the beeves of the Church were in danger his ire was kindled; 
and buckling on his armor, he mounted his steed and galloped 
furiously to the aid of his valiant friars, and the rescue of his 
cattle. The Moors attempted to urge on the lagging and full- 
fed kine, but finding the enemy close upon them, they were 
obliged to abandon their spoil among the olive-trees, and to re¬ 
treat. The prior then gave the cattle in charge to a squire, to 
drive them back to the camp. He would have returned himself, 
but his friars had continued on for some distance. The stout 
prior, therefore, gave spurs to his horse and galloped beyond 
them, to turn them back. Suddenly great shouts and cries arose 
before and behind him, and an ambuscade of Moors, both horse 
and foot, came rushing out of a ravine. The stout Prior of San 
Juan saw that there was no retreat; and he disdained to render 
himself a prisoner. Commending himself to his patron saint, 
iind bracing his shield, he charged bravely among the Moors, 
and began to lay about him with a holy zeal of spirit and a 
vigorous arm of flesh. Every blow that he gave was in the 
name of San Juan, and every blow laid an infidel in the dust. 
His friars, seeing the peril of their leader, came running to his 
aid, accompanied by a number of cavaliers. They rushed 
into the fight, shouting, “ San Juan! San Juanl” and began to 
deal such sturdy blows as savored more of the camp than of 
the cloister. Great and fierce was this struggle between cowl 
and turban. The ground was strewn with bodies of the in¬ 
fidels ; but the Christians were a mere handful among a multi¬ 
tude. A burly friar, commander of Sietefilla, was struck to 
t he earth, and his shaven head cleft by a blow of a scimetar; 


108 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


several squires and cavaliers, to the number of twenty, fell 
covered with wounds; yet still the stout prior and his brethren 
continued fighting with desperate fury, shouting incessantly, 
“San Juan! San Juan!” and dealing their blows with as good 
heart as they had ever dealt benedictions on their followers. 

The noise of this skirmish, and holy shouts of the fighting 
friars, resounded through the camp. The alarm was given, 
“ The Prior of San Juan is surrounded by the enemy! To the 
rescue! to the rescue!” The whole Christian host was in 
agitation, but none were so alert as those holy warriors of the 
Church, Don Garcai, Bishop of Cordova, and Don Sancho, 
Bishop of Coria. Hastily summoning their vassals, horse and 
foot, they bestrode their steeds, with cuirass over cassock, and 
lance instead of crosier, and set off at full gallop to the rescue 
of their brother saints. When the Moors saw the warrior 
bishops and their retainers scouring to the field, they gave over 
the contest, and leaving the prior and his companions, they 
drew off toward the city. Their retreat was soon changed to a 
headlong flight; for the bishops, not content with rescuing the 
prior, continued in pursuit of his assailants. The Moorish 
foot-soldiers were soon overtaken and either slaughtered or 
made prisoners: nor did the horsemen make good their retreat 
into the city, until the powerful arm of the Church had visited 
their rear with pious vengeance.* Nor did the chastisement 
of Heaven end here. The stout prior of the hospital, being 
once aroused, was full of ardor and enterprise. Concerting 
with the Prince Don Enrique, and the Masters of Calatrava 
and Alcantara, and the valiant Lorenzo Xuarez, they made a 
sudden assault by night on the suburb of Seville called Benal- 
jofar, and broke their way into it with fire and sword. The 
Moors were aroused from their sleep by the flames of their 
dwellings and the shouts of the Christians. There was hard 
and bloody fighting. The prior of the hospital, with his valiant 
friars, was in the fiercest of the action, and their war-cry of 
“ San Juan! San Juan!” was heard in all parts of the suburb. 
Many houses were burnt, many sacked, many Moors slain or 
taken prisoners, and the Christian knights and warrior friars, 
having gathered together a great cavalgada of the flocks and 
herds which were in the suburb, drove it off in triumph to the 
camp, by the light of the blazing dwellings. 

A like inroad was made by the prior and the same cavaliers, 


* Cronica General, pt. 4, p. 338, 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


309 


a few nights afterward, into the suburb called Macarena, which 
they laid waste in like manner, bearing off wealthy spoils. 
Such was the pious vengeance which the Moors brought upon 
themselves by meddling with the kine of the stout prior of the 
hospital. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

BRAVADO OF THE THREE CAVALIERS.-^-AMBUSH AT THE BRIDGE 
OVER THE GUADAYRA.—DESPERATE VALOR OF GARCI PEREZ.— 
GRAND ATTEMPT OF ADMIRAL BONIFAZ ON THE BRIDGE OF 
BOxVTS.—SEVILLE DISMEMBERED FROM TRIANA. 

Of all the Christian cavaliers who distinguished themselves 
in this renowned siege of Seville, there was none who sur¬ 
passed in valor the bold Garci Perez de Vargas. This hardy 
knight was truly enamored of danger, and like a gamester 
with his gold, he seemed to have no pleasure of his life except 
in putting it in constant jeopardy. One of the greatest friends 
of Garci Perez was Don Lorenzo Xuarez Gallinato, the same 
who had boasted of the valor of Garci Perez at the time that 
he exposed himself to be attacked by seven Moorish horsemen. 
They were not merely companions, but rivals in arms; for in 
this siege it was the custom among the Christian knights to 
vie with each other in acts of daring enterprise. 

One morning, as Garci Perez, Don Lorenzo Xuarez, and a 
third cavalier, named Alfonso Tello, were on horseback, patrol¬ 
ling the skirts of the camp, a friendly contest arose between 
them as to who was most adventurous in arms. To settle the 
question, it was determined to put the proof to the Moors, by 
going alone and striking the points of their lances in the gate 
of the city. 

No sooner was this mad bravado agreed upon than they 
turned the reins of their horses and made for Seville. The 
Moorish sentinels, from the towers of the gate, saw three 
Christian knights advancing over the plain, and supposed 
them to be messengers or deserters from the army. When the 
cavaliers drew near, each struck his lance against the gate, 
and wheeling round, put spurs to his horse and retreated. The 
Moors, considering this a scornful defiance, were violently 



110 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


exasperated, and sallied forth in great numbers to revenge the 
insult. They soon were hard on the traces of the Christian 
cavaliers. The first who turned to fight with them was Alfonso 
Tello, being of a fiery and impatient spirit. The second was 
Garci Perez; the third was Don Lorenzo, who waited until the 
Moors came up with them, when he braced Ins shield, couched 
his lance, and took the whole brunt of their charge. A des¬ 
perate fight took place, for though the Moors were overwhelm¬ 
ing in number, the cavaliers were three of the most valiant 
warriors in Spain. The conflict was beheld from the camp. 
The alarm was given; the Christian cavaliers hastened to the 
rescue of their companions in arms; squadron after squadron 
pressed to the field, the Moors poured out reinforcements from 
the gate; in this way a general battle ensued, which lasted a 
great part of the day, until the Moors werej vanquished and 
driven within their walls. 

There was one of the gates of Seville, called the gate of the 
Alcazar, which led out to a small bridge over the Guadayra. 
Out of this gate the Moors used to make frequent sallies, 
to fall suddenly upon the Christian camp, or to sweep off 
the flocks and herds about its outskirts, and then to scour 
back to the bridge, beyond which it was dangerous to pursue 
them. 

The defence of this part of the camp was intrusted to 
those two valiant compeers in arms, Garci Perez de Vargas 
and Don Lorenzo Xuarez; and they determined to take ample 
revenge upon the Moors for all the depredations they had com¬ 
mitted. They chose, therefore, about two hundred hardy 
cavaliers, the flower of those seasoned warriors on the op¬ 
posite side of the Guadalquivir, who formed the little army 
of the good Master of Santiago. When they were all assem¬ 
bled together, Don Lorenzo put them in ambush, in the way by 
which the Moors were accustomed to pass in their maraudings, 
and he instructed them, in pursuing the Moors, to stop at the 
bridge, and by no means to pass beyond it; for between it and 
the city there was a great host of the enemy, and the bridge 
was so narrow that to retreat over i-t would be perilous in the 
extreme. This order was given to all, but was particularly 
intended for Garci Perez, to restrain his daring spirit, which 
was ever apt to run into peril. 

They had not been long in ambush when they heard the dis¬ 
tant tramp of the enemy upon the bridge, and found that the 


CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


Ill 


Moors were upon the forage. They kept concealed, and the 
Moors passed by them in careless and irregular manner, as men 
apprehending no danger. Scarce had they gone by when the 
cavaliers rushed forth, charged into the midst of them, and 
threw them all into confusion. Many were killed or over¬ 
thrown in the shock, the rest took to flight, and made at full 
speed for the bridge. Most of the Christian soldiers, according 
to orders, stopped at the bridge; but Don Lorenzo, with a few 
of liis cavaliers, followed the enemy half way across, making 
great havoc in that narrow pass. Many of the Moors, in their 
panic, flung themselves from the bridge, and perished in the 
Guadayra; others were cut down and trampled under the hoofs 
of friends and foes. Don Lorenzo, in the heat of the fight, 
cried aloud incessantly, defying the Moors, and proclaiming his 
name, — ‘ ‘ Turn hither! turn hither! ’Tis I, Lorenzo Xuarez!” 
But few of the Moors cared to look him in the face. 

Don Lorenzo now returned, to his cavaliers, but on looking 
round, Garci Perez was not to be seen. All were dismayed, 
fearing some evil fortune had befallen him; when, on casting 
their eyes beyond the bridge, they saw him on the opposite 
side, surrounded by Moors and fighting with desperate 
valor. 

‘‘Garci Perez has deceived us,” said Don Lorenzo, “and has 
passed the bridge, contrary to agreement. But to the rescue, 
comrades! Never let it be said that so good a cavalier as Garci 
Perez was lost for want of our assistance.” So saying, they all 
put spurs to their horses, rushed again upon the bridge, and 
broke their way across, cutting down and overturning the 
Moors, and driving great numbers to fling themselves into the 
river. When the Moors who had surrounded Garci Perez saw 
this band of cavaliers rushing from the bridge, they turned to 
defend themselves. The contest was fierce, but broken; many 
of the Moors took refuge in the river, but the Christians fob 
lowed and slew them among the waves. They continued fight' 
ing for the remainder of the day, quite up to the gate of the 
Alcazar; and if the chronicles of the times speak with their 
usual veracity, full three thousand infidels bit the dust on that 
occasion. When Don Lorenzo returned to the camp, and was 
in presence cf the king and of numerous cavaliers, great en« 
comiums were passed upon his valor; but he modestly replied 
that Garci Perez had that day made them good soldiers by 
force. 


112 


MOORISH CHRONICLES . 


From that time forward the Moors attempted no further in¬ 
roads into the camp, so severe a lesson had they received from 
these brave cavaliers.* 

The city of Seville was connected with the suburb of Triana 
by a strong bridge of boats, fastened together by massive 
chains of iron. By this bridge a constant communication was 
kept up between Triana and the city, and mutual aid and sup¬ 
port passed and repassed. While this bridge remained, it was 
impossible to complete the investment of the city, or to cap¬ 
ture the castle of Triana. 

The bold Admiral Bonifaz at length conceived a plan to 
break this bridge asunder, and thus to cut off all communica¬ 
tion between the city and Triana. No sooner had this idea 
entered his mind than he landed, and proceeded with great 
speed to the royal tent, to lay it before the king. Then a con¬ 
sultation was summoned by the king of ancient mariners and 
artificers of ships, and other persons learned in maritime 
affairs; and after Admiral Bonifaz had propounded his plan, it 
was thought to be good, and all preparations were made to 
carry it into effect. The admiral took two of his largest and 
strongest ships, and fortified them at the prows with solid tim¬ 
ber and with plates of iron; and he put within them a great 
number of chosen men, well armed and provided with every¬ 
thing for attack and defence. Of one he took the command 
himself. It was the third day of May, the day of the most 
Holy Cross, that he chose for this grand and perilous attempt; 
and the pious King Fernando, to insure success, ordered that a 
cross should be carried as a standard at the mast-head of each 
ship. 

On the third of May, toward the hour of noon, the two ships 
descended the Guadalquivir for some distance, to gain room to 
come up with the greater violence. Here they waited the rising 
of the tide, and as soon as it was in full force, and a favorable 
wind had sprung up from the sea, they hoisted anchor, spread 
all sail, and put themselves in the midst of the current. The 
whole shores were lined on each side with Christian troops, 
watching the event with great anxiety. The king and the 
Prince Alfonso, with their warriors, on the one side had drawn 
close to the city to prevent the sallying forth of the Moors, 
while the good Master of Santiago, Don Pelayo Perez Correa, 


* Cronica General de Espafia, pt. 4. Cronica del Rey Fernando el Santo, c. 60. 
Cronica Gotica, T. 3, p. 126. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


11.3 


kept watch upon the gates of Triana. The Moors crowded the 
tops of their towers, their walls and house-tops, and prepared 
engines and weapons of all kinds to overwhelm the ships with 
destruction. 

Twice the bold admiral set all sail and started on his career, 
and tvfrce the wind died away before he had proceeded half his 
course. Shouts of joy and derision rose from the walls and 
towers of Seville, while the warriors in the ships began to fear 
that their attempt would be unsuccessful. At length a fresh 
and strong wind arose that swelled every sail and sent the 
ships ploughing up the waves of the Guadalquivir. A dead 
silence prevailed among the hosts oh either bank; even the 
Moors remained silent, in fixed and breathless suspense. 
When the ships arrived within reach of the walls of the city and 
the suburbs, a tremendous attack was commenced from every 
wall and tower; great engines discharged stones and offensive 
weapons of all kinds, and flaming pots of Greek fire. On the 
tower of gold were stationed catapults and vast cross-bows that 
were worked with cranks, and from hence an iron shower 
was rained upon the ships: The Moors in Triana were equally 
active; from every wall and turret, from house-tops, and from 
the banks of the river, an incessant assault was kept up with 
catapults, cross-bows, slings, darts, and everything that could 
annoy. Through all this tempest of war, the ships kept on 
their course. The first ship which arrived struck the bridge 
on the part toward Triana. The shock resounded from shore 
to shore, the whole fabric -trembled, the ship recoiled and 
reeled, but the bridge was unbroken; and shouts of joy rose 
from the Moors on each side of the river. Immediately after 
came the ship of the admiral. It struck the bridge just about 
the centre with a tremendous crash. The iron chains which 
bound the boats together snapped as if they had been flax. 
The boats were crushed and shattered and flung wide asunder, 
and the ship of the admiral proceeded in triumph through the 
open space. No sooner did the King and the Prince Alfonso see 
the success of the admiral, than they pressed with their troops 
closely round the city, and prevented the Moors from sallying 
forth; while the ships, having accomplished their enterprise, ex¬ 
tricated themselves from their dangerous situation, and returned 
in triumph to their accustomed anchorage. This was the fatal 
blow that dismembered Seville from Triana, c.nd insured the 
downfall of the city. 


114 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

INVESTMENT OF TRIANA.—GARCI PEREZ AND THE INFANZQN. 

On the day after the breaking of the bridge, the king, the 
Prince Alfonso, the Prince Enrique, the various masters of 
the orders, and a great part of the army, crossed the Guadal¬ 
quivir and commenced an attack on Triana, while the bold 
Admiral Bonifaz approached with his ships and assaulted the 
place from the water. But the Christian army was unpro¬ 
vided with ladders or machines for the attack, and fought to 
great disadvantage. The Moors, from the safe shelter of their 
walls and towers, rained a shower of missiles of all kinds. As 
they were so high above the Christians, their arrows, darts, 
and lances came with the greater force. They were skilful 
with the cross-bow, and had engines of such force that the 
darts which they discharged would sometimes pass through a 
cavalier all armed, and bury themselves in the earth.* 

The very women combated from the walls, and hurled down 
stones that crushed the warriors beneath. 

While the army was closely investing Triana, and fierce 
encounters were daily taking place between Moor and Chris¬ 
tian, there arrived at the camp a youthful Infanzon, or noble, 
of proud lineage. He brought with him a shining train of 
vassals, all newly armed and appointed, and his own armor, 
all fresh and lustrous, showed none.of the dents and bruises 
and abuses of the war. As this gay and gorgeous cavalier was 
patrolling the camp, with several cavaliers, he beheld Garci 
Perez pass by, in armor and accoutrements all worn and soiled 
by the hard service he had performed, and he saw a similar 
device to his own, of white waves, emblazoned on the 
scutcheon of this unknown warrior. Then the nobleman was 
highly ruffled and incensed, and he exclaimed, “ How is this? 
who is this sorry cavalier that dares to bear thfese devices? By 
my faith, he must either give them up or show his reasons for 
usurping them.” The other cavaliers exclaimed, “ Be cautious 
how you speak; this is Garci Perez; a braver cavalier wears 
not sword in Spain. For all he goes thus modestly and quietly 


* Cronica General, pt. 4. p. 341. 



CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


115 

about, he is a very lion in the field, nor does he assume any¬ 
thing that he cannot well maintain. Should he hear this 
which you have said, trust us he would not rest quiet until he 
had terrible satisfaction.” 

Now so it happened that certain mischief-makers carried 
word to Garci Perez of what the nobleman had said, expecting 
to see him burst into fierce indignation, and defy the other to 
the field. But Garci Perez remained tranquil, and said not a 
word. 

Within a day or two after, there was a sally from the castle 
of Triana and a hot skirmish between the Moors and Chris¬ 
tians; and Garci Perez and the Infanzon, and a number of 
cavaliers, pursued the Moors up to the barriers of the castle. 
Here the enemy rallied and made a fierce defence, and killed 
several of the cavaliers. But Garci Perez put spurs to his 
horse, and couching his lance, charged among the thickest of 
the foes, and followed by a handful of his companions, drove 
the Moors to the very gates of Triana. The Moors seeing how 
few were their pursuers, turned upon them, and dealt bravely 
with sword and lance and mace, while stones and darts and 
arrows were rained down from the towers above the gates. 
At length the Moors took refuge within the walls, leaving the 
field to the victorious cavaliers. Garci Perez drew off coolly 
and calmly amidst a shower of missiles from the wall. He 
came out of the battle with his armor all battered and defaced; 
his helmet was bruised, the crest broken off, and his buckler 
so dented and shattered that the device could scarcely be per¬ 
ceived. On returning to the barrier, he found there the Infan¬ 
zon, with his armor all uninjured, and his armorial bearings 
as fresh as if just emblazoned, for the vaunting warrior had 
not ventured beyond the barrier. Then Garci Perez drew 
near to the Infanzon, and eyeing him from head to foot, 

4 Senor cavalier,” said he, “ you may well dispute my right to 
wear this honorable device in my shield, since you see I take 
so little care of it that it is almost destroyed. You, on the 
other hand, are worthy of bearing it. You are the guardian 
angel of honor, since you guard it so carefully as to put it to 
no risk. I will only observe to you that the sword kept in the 
scabbard rusts, and the valor that is never put to the proof 
becomes sullied. ” * 

At these words the Infanzon was deeply humiliated, for he 


* Cronica General, pt. 4. Cronica Gotica. T. 3. $ lfi. 



116 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


saw that Garci Perez had heard of his empty speeches, and he 
felt how unworthily he had spoken of so valiant and magnani¬ 
mous a cavalier. “Senor cavalier,” said he, “pardon my 
ignorance and presumption; you alone are worthy of bear¬ 
ing those arms, for you derive not nobility from them, but 
ennoble them by your glorious deeds.” 

Then Garci Perez blushed at the praises he had thus drawn 
upon himself, and he regretted the harshness of his words to¬ 
ward the Infanzon, and he not merely pardoned him all that 
had passed, but gave him his hand in pledge of amity, and from 
that time they were close friends and companions in arm:.* 


CHAPTER XX. 

CAPITULATION OF SEVILLE.—DISPERSION OF THE MOORISH 
INHABITANTS.—TRIUMPHANT ENTRY OF KING FERNANDO. 

About this time there arrived in Seville a Moorish alfaqui, 
named Orias, with a large company of warriors, who came to 
this war as if performing a pilgrimage, for it was considered a 
holy war no less by infidels than Christians. This Orias was of 
a politic and crafty nature, and he suggested to the comman¬ 
der of Seville a stratagem by which they might get Prince Al¬ 
fonso in their power, and compel King Fernando to raise the 
siege by way of ransom. The counsel of Orias was adopted, 
after a consultation with the principal cavaliers, and measures 
taken to carry it into execution; a Moor was sent, therefore, 
as if secretly and by stealth, to Prince Alfonso, and offered to 
put him in possession of two towers of the wall, if he would 
come in person to receive them, which towers once in his pos¬ 
session, it would be easy to overpower the city. 

Prince Alfonso listened to the envoy with seeming eagerness, 
but suspected some deceit, and thought it unwise to put his 
person in such jeopardy. Lest, however, there should be 
truth in his proposals, a party of chosen cavaliers were sent as 
if to take possession of the towers, and with them was Don 
Pero Nunez de Guzman, disguised as the prince. 

When they came to the place where the Moors had 


* Cronica General, pt. 4. Cronica del Rev Santo. Cronica Gotica, T. 3. § 10. 







CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


117 


appointed to meet them, they beheld a party of infidels, 
strongly armed, who advanced with sinister looks, and 
attempted to surround Don Nunez, but he, being on his guard, 
put spurs to his horse, and, breaking through the midst of 
them, escaped. His companions followed his example, all but 
one, who was struck from his horse and cut to pieces by the 
Moors.* 

Just after this event there arrived a great reinforcement to 
the camp from the city of Cordova, bringing provisions and 
various munitions of war. Finding his army thus increased, 
the king had a consultation with Admiral Bonifaz, and deter¬ 
mined completely to cut off all communication between Seville 
and Triana, for the Moors still crossed the river occasionally 
by fording. When they were about to carry their plan into 
effect, the crafty Alfaqui Orias crossed to Triana, accom¬ 
panied by a number of Ganzules. He was charged with 
instructions to the garrison, and to concert some mode of 
reuniting their forces, or of effecting some blow upon the 
Christian camp; for unless they could effect a union and co¬ 
operation, it would be impossible to make much longer resist¬ 
ance. 

Scarce had Orias passed, when the Christian sentinels gave 
notice. Upon this, a detachment of the Christian army imme¬ 
diately crossed and took possession of the opposite shore, and 
Admiral Bonifaz stationed his fleet in the middle of the river. 
Thus the return of Orias was prevented, and all intercourse be¬ 
tween the places, even by messenger, completely interrupted. 
The city and Triana were now severally attacked, and unable 
to render each other assistance. The Moors were daily dimi¬ 
nishing in number; many slain in battle, many taken captive, 
and many dying of hunger and disease. The Christian forces 
were daily augmenting, and were animated by continual 
success, whereas mutiny and sedition began to break out 
among the inhabitants of the city. The Moorish commander 
Axataf, therefore, seeing all further resistance vain, sent am¬ 
bassadors to capitulate with King Fernando. It was a hard 
and humiliating struggle to resign this fair city, the queen of 
Andalusia, the seat of Moorish sway and splendor, and which 
had been under Moorish domination ever since the conquest. 

The valiant Axataf endeavored to make various conditions; 
that Fernando should raise the siege on receiving the tribute 


* Cronica General, pt. 4, p. 424. 





118 


MOORISH CHRONICLES. 


which had hitherto been paid to the miramamolin. This being 
peremptorily refused, he offered to give up a third of the city, 
and then a half, building at his own cost a wall to divide the 
Moorish part from the Christian. King Fernando, however, 
would listen to no such terms. He demanded the entire surren¬ 
der of the place, with the exception of the persons and effects of 
the inhabitants, and permitting the commander to retain pos¬ 
session of St. Lucar, Aznal Farache, and Niebla. The comman¬ 
der of Seville saw the sword suspended over his head, and had 
to submit; the capitulations of the surrender were signed, when 
Axataf made one last request, that he might be permitted to 
demolish the grand mosque and the principal tower (or Giralda) 
of the city.* He felt that these would remain perpetual mon¬ 
uments of his disgrace. The Prince Alfonso was present when 
this last demand was made, and his father looked at him sig¬ 
nificantly, as if he desired the reply to come from his lips. The 
prince rose indignantly and exclaimed, that if there should be 
a single tile missing from the temple or a single brick from the 
tower, it should be paid by so many lives that the streets of 
Seville should run with blood. The Moors were silenced by 
this reply, and prepared witli heavy hearts to fulfil the capitu¬ 
lation. One month was allowed them for the purpose, the 
alcazar or citadel of Seville being given up to the Christians as 
a security. 

On the twenty-third day of November this important fortress 
was surrendered, after a siege of eighteen months. A deputa¬ 
tion of the principal Moors came forth and presented King 
Fernando with the keys of the city; at the same time the 
aljamia, or council of the Jews, presented him with the keys of 
Jewry, the quarter of the city which they inhabited. This key 
was notable for its curious workmanship. It was formed of all 
kinds of metals. The guards of it were wrought into letters, 
bearing the following signification,—“ God will open—the king 
will enter.” On the ring was inscribed in Hebrew,—‘‘The 
King of kings will enter; all the world will behold him. ” This 
key is still preserved in the cathedral of Seville, in the place 
where repose the remains of the sainted King Fernando, f 


* Mariana. L. 13, c. 7. 

t In Castile, whenever the kings entered any place where there was a synagogue, 
the Jews assembled in council arid paid to the Monteros, or bull-fighters, twelve 
maravedis each, to guard them, that they should receive no harm from the Chris¬ 
tians; being held in such contempt and odium, that it was necessary they should be 
under the safeguard of the king, not to be injured or insulted. (Zuniga: Annales de 
Sevilla.) 





CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 

During the month of grace the Moors sold such of their 
effects as they could not carry with them, and the king pro¬ 
vided vessels for such as chose to depart for Africa. Upward 
of one hundred thousand, it is said, were thus convoyed by 
Admiral Bonifaz, while upward of two hundred thousand dis* 
persed themselves throughout such of the territory of Andalu¬ 
sia as still remained in possession of the Moors. 

When the month was expired, and the city was evacuated 
by its Moorish inhabitants, King Fernando the Saint entered 
in solemn triumph, in a grand religious and military proces¬ 
sion. There were all the captains and cavaliers of the army, 
in shining armor, with the prelates, and masters of the reli¬ 
gious and military orders, and the nobility of Castile, Leon, and 
Aragon, in their richest apparel. The streets resounded with 
the swelling notes of martial music and with the joyous accla¬ 
mations of the multitude. 

In the midst of the procession was the venerable effigy of 
the most Holy Mary, on a triumphal car of silver, wrought 
with admirable skill; and immediately after followed the 
pious king, with a drawn sword in his hand, and on his left 
was Prince Alfonso and the other princes. 

The procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had 
been purified and consecrated as a Christian temple, where the 
triumphal car of the Holy Virgin was placed at the grand 
altar. Here the pious king knelt and returned thanks to 
Heaven and the Virgin for this signal victory, and all present 
chanted Te Deum Laudamus. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

DEATH OF KING FERNANDO. 

When King Fernando had regulated everything for the 
good government and prosperity of Seville, he sallied forth 
with his conquering army to subdue the surrounding country. 
He soon brought under subjection Xerez, Medina Sidonia, 
Alua, Bepel, and many other places near the sea-coast; some 
surrendered voluntarily, others were taken by force; he main¬ 
tained a strict peace with his vassal the King of Granada, but 
finding not sufficient scope for his arms in Spain, and being 
inflamed with a holy zeal in the cause of the faith, he deter* 



*zO 


MOORISH CHRONICLES . 


mined to pass over into Africa, and retaliate upon the Mos 
lems their daring invasion of his country. For this purpose 
he ordered a powerful armada to be prepared in the ports of 
Cantabria, to be put under the command of the bold Admiral 
Bonifaz. 

In the midst of his preparations, which spread consterna¬ 
tion throughout Mauritania, the pious king fell dangerously 
ill at Seville of a dropsy. When he found his dying hour ap¬ 
proaching, he made his death-bed confession, and requested 
the holy Sacrament to be administered to him. A train of 
bishops and other clergy, among whom was his son Philip, 
Archbishop of Seville, brought the Sacrament into his pres¬ 
ence. The king rose from his bed, threw himself on his knees, 
with a rope round his neck and a crucifix in his hand, and 
poured forth his soul in penitence and prayer. Having re¬ 
ceived the viatica and the holy Sacrament, he commanded all 
ornaments of royalty to be taken from his chamber. He as¬ 
sembled his children round his bedside, and blessed his son the 
Prince Alfonso, as his first-born and the heir of his throne, 
giving him excellent advice for the government of his king¬ 
dom, and charging him to protect the interests of his brethren. 
The pious king afterward fell into an ecstasy or trance, in 
which he beheld angels watching round his bed to bear his 
soul to heaven. He awoke from this in a state of heavenly 
rapture, and, asking for a candle, he took it in his hand and 
made his ultimate profession of the faith. He then requested 
the clergy present to repeat the litanies, and to chant the Te 
Deum Laudamus. In chanting the first verse of the hymn, 
the king gently inclined his head, with perfect serenity of 
countenance, and rendered up his spirit. “The hymn,” says 
the ancient chronicle, “which was begun on earth by men, 
was continued by the voices of angels, which were heard by 
all present.” These doubtless were the angels which the king 
in his ecstasy had beheld around his couch, and which now 
accompanied him, in his glorious ascent to heaven, with songs 
of holy triumph. Nor was it in his chamber alone that these 
voices were heard, but in all the royal alcazars of Seville, the 
sweetest voices were heard in the air and seraphic music, as 
of angelic choirs, at the moment that the sainted king ex¬ 
pired.* He died on the 30th of May, the vespers of the Holy 


* Pablo de Espinosa: Grandesas de Sevilla, fol. 146. Cronica del Santo Rey, c. 
78. Cronica Gotica, T. 3, p. 166. 




CHRONICLE OF FERNANDO THE SAINT. 


121 


Trinity, in the year of the Incarnation one thousand two hun¬ 
dred and forty-two, aged seventy-three years—having reigned 
thirty-five years over Castile and twenty over Leon. 

Two days after his death he was interred in his royal chapel 
in the Holy Church, in a sepulchre of alabaster, which still 
remains. It is asserted by grave authors that at the time of 
putting his body in the sepulchre, the choir of angels again 
was heard chanting his eulogium, and filling the air with 
sweet melody in praise of his virtues. 514 

When Alhamar, the Moorish King of Granada, heard of his 
death, he caused great demonstrations of mourning to be made 
throughout his dominions. During his life he sent yearly a 
number of Moors with one hundred wax tapers to assist at his 
exequies, which ceremony was observed by his successors, 
until the time of the conquest of Granada by Fernando the 
Catholic, f 


* Argoti de Molina: Nobleza de Andaluzia, L. 1, c. 21. Tomas Bocio: Signales do 
la Iglesia, L. 20. Don Rodrigo Sanchez, Bishop of Palencia, pt. 3, c. 40. 
t Pablo de Espinosa, fol. 146. 


THS3 EBB, 




A C. 




















































